
Qass_Jlll 

Book 

Copyright ]s^_ 



CQEaaGHT DEPOSm 



ULTIMATE IDEALS 



BY 



INIARY TAYLOR BLAUVELT 

Author of "The Development of Cabinet Government 

in England," "In Cambridge Backs," 

"Solitude Letters" 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1917 



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copymght, 1917 
Sherman, Feekch ^ Company 



©CLA477509 






TO 
ALL MY PUPILS 

OLD AND NEW 



" It is manifest that nothing can be of any conse- 
quence to mankind, or to any creature, but happiness." 
Bishop Butler. 



" Happiness and reality came through Jesus 
Christ." John 1:17 — translated by Matthew Ar- 
nold. 



FOREWORD 

This little book is the outgrowth of thirteen 
years of teaching. If it be asked why I have 
chosen to write upon so trite a subject, I reply 
that I had taught Bible many years before I had 
the faintest understanding of what was meant by 
the expressions, the poor in spirit, the meek, the 
pure in heart, before I had any comprehension of 
what it was to inherit the earth, or to see God. 
Because I think there may be others in like case 
with myself, I venture to put forth this little book 
as my attempt to interpret the message of the 
Divine Teacher in terms of the life of to-day. 

Even in this age of war, unrighteousness and un- 
happiness, it may not be amiss to consider the 
ideals of peace, righteousness and happiness, given 
us by that Prince of Peace, who, we yet believe, 
would in righteousness make war. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Ultimate Ideal 1 

II The Poor in Spirit 12 

III They That Mourn 34 

IV The Meek 45 

V They That Hunger and Thirst After 

Righteousness 64 

VI The Merciful 80 

VII The Peacemakers 94 

VIII The Pure in Heart 109 



I 

THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 

It is very difficult in these days for a thinking 
person to give any detailed account of what he 
believes concerning God. And yet I am sure that 
it is an age in which there are more seekers after 
God, more seekers after truth than ever before. 
If there is less readiness to believe what is taught 
than there used to be, that is because the desire 
for truth is stronger than it used to be. We 
realize that it is not sufficient to love the Lord 
our God with all our heart, (the emotional na- 
ture), with all our soul, (the aesthetic nature), 
with all our strength, (the will), but that we must 
also love Him with all our mind. If the God of 
our fathers is to be our God, it must not be 
because we have accepted Him from them, but 
because we have found Him for ourselves. 

For while it is true that we cannot by search- 
ing find out God, cannot find out the Almighty 
unto perfection, it is also true, and we are realiz- 
ing more and more that it is true, that the whole 
purpose of our creation is to seek after God, if 
haply we may feel after Him and find Him. 

And doubtless it was meant that this search 
1 



a ULTIMATE IDEALS 

after God should go on indefinitely, that the God 
of one generation should not be the God of the 
next, that to find Him should be to lose Him. 
For when the purpose of life is accomplished, 
when there is nothing more to look forward to, 
romance ends and life ends. To the race that 
has fully found its God, further spiritual activ- 
ity is impossible, it is time for it to become ex- 
tinct. 

But while there can be no ultimate belief, there 
are certain ideals which to me, at my present 
stage of thinking, do seem to be ultimate. These 
ideals, which, although they do not comprise the 
whole of life,^ certainly comprise a large part of 
it, seem to me best expressed by Jesus in the 
verses knowns as the Beatitudes. From over 
familiarity these verses, have become trite, but 
lately they have come to me with all the splendor 
of a new revelation. I see more and more that it 
was His ability to put such profound truth into a 
nutshell that made the Carpenter of Nazareth the 
Son of God, that to Him far more than to Aris- 
totle belongs the title, " Master of those that 
know." 

For Jesus did not think, He knew. He was 
not the thinker. He was the seer. He who sees 
has no need to think. But to me, as a result of 
long thinking, has come a little understanding 
of that which He knew. And because when old 
things become new, they are surrounded with a 
1 Notably the aesthetic ideals are omitted. 



THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 3 

glorj and a tenderness, such as the absolutely 
new can never have, I have ventured to write on 
what may seem to be a worn out theme, in the 
hope that I may make what has become new to 
me, new to some one else. But chiefly I write, as 
I think every writer does, to clarify my own 
thought. For it is only after we have expressed 
a thing clearly that we really understand it. 

Whether the passage commonly known as the 
Sermon on the Mount was spoken all at one time 
or not, it certainly is the moral, or rather the 
spiritual law of the kingdom of God, occupying 
the same place in the New Testament Kingdom 
of God, as the law, reputed to have been given 
from Sinai, occupies in the Old Testament King- 
dom of God. And if it was not spoken all at one 
time, the author of the first Gospel has put it 
together so artistically, that it might have been 
so spoken. Regarded as a single discourse, it 
analyzes easily, and Jesus might almost like the 
modem clergyman, have taken a text. And if He 
had done so, I think it would have been those 
words of His to the Samaritan woman, " God is a 
Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth." 

Indeed, these words might almost be said to 
comprise His whole message to man. For it was 
the mission of Jesus to make a religion, which had 
become little more than conventional, spiritual. 
" Except your righteousness exceed the righteous- 
ness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye can in no 



4 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven ! " How 
is our righteousness to exceed the righteousness of 
the scribes and Pharisees? In that it is in spirit 
and in truth! 

Following out the idea that the whole passage 
is the spiritual law of the kingdom, the first nine 
verses, commonly known as the Beatitudes, may 
be considered as describing the citizens of the 
kingdom, their duties and their rights. 

And who are the citizens of the kingdom? 
Why, the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the 
meek, they that hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the 
peacemakers. 

And what are their duties as citizens? Why, 
to be poor in spirit, to learn the lesson that 
mourning teaches, to hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, 
to be peacemakers. 

That is, their duty consists not in performing 
certain actions, but in having a certain spirit. 
Actions are valuable, only as they tend to pro- 
duce, or are manifestations of this spirit. For the 
outward form that the worship of Him who is 
Spirit takes, does not much matter; the only im- 
portant thing is that it should be in spirit and 
in truth. 

And what are the rights of the citizens of the 
kingdom? They may all be summed up in one, 
blessedness, happiness. Happy are the poor in 
spirit, happy are they that mourn, happy are the 



THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 5 

meek, happy are they that hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, happy are the pure in heart, 
happy are the merciful, happy are the peace- 
makers. 

And the end of each Beatitude gives us an idea 
of what Jesus' conception of happiness was. 
Happiness is to possess the kingdom of Heaven, 
to be comforted, to inherit the earth, to be filled 
with righteousness, to see God, to be called the 
children of God. It is not what happens to us, 
but what happens in us, that makes us happy. 
Happiness, like the kingdom of Heaven, is within 
us. Happiness is the kingdom of Heaven, the 
Kingdom of Heaven is Happiness. 

For the end of the kingdom, its purpose and its 
only purpose, is happiness. Jesus knew that it 
is not only the right, but the duty of every man 
to pursue happiness. He came to teach us how 
to pursue it. There is only one ultimate ideal, 
and that is happiness. Not even righteousness, 
but happiness. Righteousness is the path, but 
happiness is the goal. For our goal, the place to 
which we journey, is His presence; and in that 
presence is fullness of joy, at His right hand is 
happiness forevermore. 

For we were created for joy, not for sorrow; 
if weeping endures for a night, it is only that joy 
may come in the morning. Only in joy can the 
soul fulfil itself, fulfil the Creator's thought of it, 
be worthy of the Creator and of creation. 

In the moments in which we realize our citizen- 



6 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

ship, we recognize this. For then we know what 
happiness is, and we understand that it does not 
spring from outward things, but from such a 
conception of life, as leads to a gladsome enlight- 
ened acceptance of whatever our particular lives 
may bring, a serene energy in which we rejoice 
both to do and to be. In such moments we cry, 
" Thy will be done," not in gloomy submission, 
but in rapturous adoration, for we have at least 
had a glimpse of what that good and perfect will 
of God is. Sacrifice is no longer for us a means 
of sanctification, for we are already sanctified, 
have already entered into the inheritance of them 
that are sanctified. Therefore, for us, there is no 
more sacrifice. We know that we can only re- 
nounce joy for the sake of some higher joy, and 
that is joy beyond joy. 

So when we fast, we no longer have to be told 
not to be as the hypocrites are, of a sad counte- 
nance; instinctively we anoint our heads, and 
wash our faces, that our outer selves may corre- 
spond to our inner selves, may radiate the joy 
that has taken possesion of, and fills our inmost 
souls. Our Father who seeth in secret has al- 
ready rewarded us. He has given us of His joy, 
has made us one with Himself. And He has re- 
warded us openly, for this joy shines out upon all 
with whom we come into contact, until they too 
become sharers in it. 

For men help each other by their joy, not by 
their sorrow. Hence it is that the first duty of 



THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 7 

the soul is to be as happy as possible, for thus 
only can it be complete, thus only can it enter 
into its inheritance, the kingdom of Heaven. 
Thus only can it come under the ultimate angel's 
law, where 

" Law, Life, Joy^ Impulse, are one thing ! " 

" I am come that they might have life, and 
that they might have it more abundantly ! " And 
of what does life consist save of constant rejoic- 
ing of soul, that rapture from which springs life, 
and ever more life? For that wonderful trinity, 
love, joy and life, which are not three but one, 
can continue to exist only as they find expression, 
and they find expression only in creation. Joy 
and only joy is creative, for while it is true that 
great suffering generally precedes creation (trav- 
ail always means pain), not until sorrow has been 
tu'rned into joy, does it become creative. Or 
rather the creative process always turns sorrow 
into joy, without joy has nothing ever been cre- 
ated. 

The prophets of India knew that when they 
wrote, " From joy does spring all this creation, 
by joy is it maintained, toward joy does it pro- 
gress, and into joy does it enter." And again, 
" Creation is the form that His joy doth take." 
And the prophets of Israel knew it when they 
sang, " Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice oh, ye 
righteous; shout for joy all ye that are upright 
in heart," '' Oh, Eternal, happy is the man that 



8 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

putteth His trust in Thee," for " All Thy ways 
are pleasantness and all Thy paths are peace 1 " 

But in Jesus' day, as Matthew Arnold points 
out, Israel had somehow lost the peace, the joy 
of which her prophets had written so much ; there- 
fore it was the mission of Him whom we call the 
Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief, to 
restore it unto them. " These things have I 
spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and 
that your joy may be full." 

But why had Israel lost her joy, why had her 
teachers become whited sepulchers, mere recepta- 
cles for dead men's bones? Because their right- 
eousness had ceased to be creative, and had be- 
come formal and traditional. Because they them- 
selves had ceased to be real! Jesus came to do 
away with formalism,^ to make men real, for thus 
only could they be happy! Happiness and real- 
ity came through Jesus Christ. 

" Sir," said the Samaritan woman, " I perceive 
that thou art a prophet," and then she began to 
ask him the most important question that she 
could think of to ask a prophet, " Our fathers 
worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in 
Jerusalem is the place where men ought to wor- 
ship I " It is as though we to-day, brought face 
to face with a prophet of God, could think of 
nothing more important to ask about than the 
cut of a surplice! 

True, this was an ignorant woman, and a 
Samaritan, but in spiritual conceptions the 



THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 9 

scribes and the Pharisees had not advanced much 
beyond her; their spiritual life, too, consisted 
mainly of outward observances. And no outward 
observances, even of things which God had really 
commanded, or which the experience of the ages 
had taught were God's laws, could bring peace 
and joy; much less such fantastic devices as they 
had invented for themselves. The heart was 
wrong. " The things which come from within a 
man's heart, they it is which defile the man." The 
keeping of the commandments, the keeping of a 
man's whole soul, through which he enters into 
life, could not consist in outward observances ! 
God is a Spirit, and we come into His presence, 
the presence in which is always fullness of joy, 
only as we worship Him in spirit and in truth ! 

For thus only can we be real, thus only can we 
fulfil ourselves, thus only can we enter into the 
joy of our Lord! For Jesus' joy consisted in the 
fact that He was real, that in Him was no sham 
whatsoever. He was Himself, He fulfilled Him- 
self. Outwardly and inwardly He was Himself, 
He was what God meant Him to be. His peace, 
His joy, consisted in the fact that He had at- 
tained the hardest thing of all to obtain, perfect 
truth, perfect sincerity, perfect self-knowledge, 
perfect self-fulfilment. He was real ; happiness 
and reality came through Jesus Christ. 

But we are not happy, because we are not real, 
because we are not ourselves ! From babyhood 
there has been so much formalism, so much con- 



10 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

ventionality in our words, in our actions, in what 
we have been pleased to call our thoughts, that 
we have lost ourselves, and cannot find ourselves. 
Indeed if we should meet our true selves, we would 
perhaps hardly know them. 

" For we have been on many thousand lines, 
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; 
But hardly have we, for one little hour. 
Been on our own lines, have we been ourselves." 

But if we would be happy, if we would have 
the joy of Jesus fulfilled in ourselves, we must 
know ourselves and be ourselves, we must come 
to ourselves, we must be our real selves, as He was 
His real self. We must die to our apparent 
selves, we must live to our real selves. 

And the inner and the outer self must be per- 
fectly harmonious ; the outer self must be a per- 
fect expression of the inner self, and the inner 
self must be worthy of perfect expression, thus 
only can we be at peace with ourselves. 

For we should never be satisfied with ourselves 
until we do what is right, not because it is our 
duty, but because we want to do it, because we 
enjoy doing it. So long as we act from a sense 
of duty, so long as sacrifice is conscious, the joy 
that springs from right action is partly self- 
conceit, and therefore vicious. But to him whose 
heart is right, all sense of duty vanishes, for him 
duty has ceased to exist, he simply enjoys himself, 
his joy is full, he is made perfect in joy. For 



THE ULTIMATE IDEAL 11 

what is happiness save perfect expression of a self 
worth expressing? The man who has attained 
to this is at one with himself, the higher self hav- 
ing completely triumphed over the lower, at one 
with the Father, whose ideal for him, he has ful- 
filled. 

This is the ultimate ideal, all other ideals are 
but the path that leads to it. It may be that 
we shall never wholly reach it. As Schlegel says 
of Plato's Republic, it is an archetype laid up in 
Heaven for the instruction of the philosopher, but 
it is at least to be " asymptotically approached." 
That is, as the curve constantly approaches its 
asymptote, although it never reaches it until it 
gets out of space into infinity, so we should ap- 
proach our asymptote, reality and the happiness 
that comes with it, although we may never reach 
it until we get out of Time into Eternity. 



II 

THE POOR IN SPIRIT 

Nothing is more curious than the way in which 
we repeat certain phrases from earhest childhood, 
without the faintest understanding of them, and 
furthermore without the faintest suspicion that 
we do not understand. Such was my experience 
with the expression " the poor in spirit." I did 
not know what it meant, nor had I the shghtest 
idea that I did not know, until in my senior year 
in college, a professor of philosophy startled me 
by asking me to define it. For the first time 
I realized that this was something that I had 
never thought about, and, furthermore, that 
it was something that it would be well to think 
about. 

On the spur of the moment, I decided that the 
words were a curious roundabout way of saying 
" the humble " ; that just as the poor in material 
things are those who feel their need of material 
things, and desire them intensely, so the poor in 
spirit are those who feel their need of spiritual 
things, and desire them intensely. This made the 
blessing promised, the kingdom of Heaven, not 
only very appropriate, but even a matter of 

12 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 13 

course. For it is impossible to desire spiritual 
blessings intensely, and not obtain them; if we 
really want the Kingdom of Heaven above all 
things else, we shall certainly have it. " If with 
all your hearts ye seek Me, ye shall surely find 
Me." 

But this makes the first beautitude differ little 
in meaning from the fourth, " Blessed are they 
that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for 
they shall be filled." I remember, too, that St. 
Luke represents Jesus as saying, " Blessed are the 
poor." Does not St. Matthew give us simply 
another and more complete version of this, a 
more understanding version? Should not this 
beatitude be interpreted " Blessed are they who, 
whether they possess or do not possess worldly 
wealth, are at least in spirit poor; they who, if 
riches increase, set not their hearts upon them; 
they who, if riches decrease, set not their hearts 
upon them. For their object is to lay up treas- 
ure not on earth, but in Heaven. And so their 
reward is that upon which they have set their 
hearts, the Kingdom of Heaven. For what is the 
kingdom of Heaven? "The kingdom of Heaven 
is not meat and drink," not the meat and drink, 
upon which they have not set their hearts, " but 
righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit," the 
things upon which they have set their hearts. 
The kingdom of Heaven is within us, and that is 
the reason that they who have set their hearts 
upon outward things are not able to find it. 



14 ULTIMATE ffiEALS 

Some time ago I heard a man condemn this as 
a soft and sentimental age, an age that was too 
lenient to the sinner, and had too little considera- 
tion for the respectable member of society. I 
could not help thinking that if this were indeed 
true, it might mean that we are beginning to un- 
derstand the mind of Christ, to have that mind 
within us which was also in Him. For Jesus seems 
to have had nothing but compassion for the obvi- 
ous sins, that bring their own punishment with 
them, the outcast was always His friend. Was it 
not that He felt that such sins had their place 
in the Divine plan for human development? For 
upon the one hand, they teach men their insuffi- 
ciency and weakness, and thus throw them back 
upon God, while on the other hand, they teach 
them to make allowance for their neighbor, to 
forgive and to love. 

For what is human development, human per- 
fection, save getting closer to God, getting closer 
to man, understanding God better, understanding 
man better, loving God better, loving man better.? 
For such development it may be that such sin is 
necessary; it is possible that we can no more be 
made perfect without sin, than we can be made 
perfect without suffering. Is it because of this 
that there is more joy in the presence of the an- 
gels of God over one sinner that repenteth, than 
over ninety and nine just persons that need no re- 
pentance .^^ It is gentleness that makes us great, 
and after all does not gentleness imply a certain 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 15 

weakness, at least sufficient weakness to under- 
stand the weak? 

On the other hand, the vices of the mind, the 
respectable sins, avarice and hypocrisy, which in 
this life ordinarily bring not punishment but pros- 
perity, are as much worse than the vices of the 
body as the mind is above the body, for they are 
the sins which in their very nature tend to sepa- 
rate us from God and man. Ye cannot serve God 
and mammon, ye cannot love God and mammon, 
ye cannot serve man and mammon, ye cannot love 
man and mammon. 

For the excessive love of money not only ex- 
tinguishes all divine ideals within a man, it also 
dulls all human interests. To the mere money- 
maker, men become nothing but raw material, out 
of which he can make more money. And when he 
has made his money, he frequently does not know 
how to use it so as to enrich even his own nature, 
or give charm to his life. His pleasures, if he 
has any apart from money-making, are often 
costly but not ennobling, his home expensive but 
not refined, while his family are often averse to 
effort, living only for excitement, and helpless 
without it. If he is hospitable, his hospitality 
often springs more from love of ostentation, than 
from love of his friend, and enriches neither him 
that gives nor him that takes. There is no po- 
etry in his life, for poetry is in its essence the 
discerning of beauty. And there is no room in 
the heart of the mere money maker for the 



16 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

strange and wistful longing which beautiful things 
arouse, for the rapturous emotion evoked by 
beauty. 

To such a man there are no moods of soul- 
delight, for there is no soul to be delighted. For 
what is the soul save the power to see the beauty 
in things, the power to see it where it is obvious, 
and the power to see it where it is not always 
obvious, in all the lives about us ? " What shall 
it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul? " In the multitude of his posses- 
sions, he has lost the power to become a son of 
God. 

Even if he be the possessor of beautiful things, 
it is often not the sense of their beauty that 
thrills him, but the fact of his possession. He 
may enjoy his own beautiful gardens, but not 
those of his neighbors, still less the public parks, 
or the wild beauty of Nature. For a thing must 
be his exclusively, before he can enjoy it, and 
thus his possessions form a high wall about him, 
cutting him off not only from his fellows, but 
from all other beautiful things. Thus in order 
that he may possess a few things, he has given up 
everything. He lives, or rather is buried alive, 
in the little world of his own possessions, while 
the poor in spirit may claim the whole world that 
God has made as his own. Nay, he may live not 
only in this world, but in a thousand worlds, for 
all things are his, not only the things that he pos- 
sesses, but also the things that he enjoys, not 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 17 

only the things that he experiences, but even the 
things that he imagines. 

I was once present at a party, which a friend 
of mine gave to some pauper blind children. One 
little lad, greatly excited, wanted to feel of every- 
thing in the room, and to know to whom each 
belonged. When in answer to his questions I 

said, " It belongs to Mrs. W , everything here 

belongs to Mrs. W ," he put his hand on my 

cheek, and with a beatific smile exclaimed, " Oh, 
no ! you made a mistake ! it is all mine for today ! " 
That is the way it is with the poor in spirit: 
everything that he can enjoy is his for today, and 
which is ours for today is ours forever. 

" What entered into thee. 
That was, is, and shall be ! '* 

" How hardly shall they that trust in riches 
enter into the kingdom of God ! '^ For the king- 
dom of God is the kingdom of love, the kingdom 
of understanding, the kingdom of the ideal, the 
kingdom of the beautiful! And into that king- 
dom none but the poor in spirit may enter. 

But we must remember that it is the poor in 
spirit that are blessed, and these are not neces- 
sarily the poor in this world's goods. There is 
no blessing in either riches or poverty, considered 
by themselves, nor is there necessarily any curse 
in either. There are times when having seen the 
vulgar materialism, the disgusting animalism, of 



18 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

certain rich people, we have a tendency to idealize 
the poor. But a closer view shows us that there 
is often quite as much materialism in the life of 
the poor, as in that of the rich. Poverty, like 
sorrow, is frequently a blessing, because it brings 
men nearer to each other, helps them to recog- 
nize each other's human hearts. Poverty, too, 
sometimes demands and cries out for faith in God. 
Those in comfortable circumstances were not 
eager to come to the marriage of the king's son; 
they had too many interests of their own. The 
blind, the poor, the halt and the maimed, having 
no such interests, were glad to come. In Tol- 
stoi's " War and Peace," it was not until Peter, 
the richest man in Russia, had been taken prisoner 
and deprived of everything, that he could look 
upon the woods and the fields, and beyond to the 
limitless horizon, and exclaim, " All that is mine ! 
All that is in me ! and that is what they think they 
have taken prisoner ! " 

Yet it is doubtful whether Peter would have felt 
this, if he had always been poor. We know that, 
for the very poor, life is often reduced to, " What 
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and where- 
withal shall we be clothed? " and that this strug- 
gle, so far from throwing the soul back upon God 
and the neighbor, frequently leaves no room in 
the life for either God or the neighbor, no power 
to appreciate the beauty of either earth, or sea 
or sky. Is it not the ultimate tragedy of the 
slums, that, under slum conditions, one can 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 19 

scarcely, from birth to death, think of anything 
but the body? Existence becomes merely animal, 
men work in order to get food to keep the body 
alive, in order to do more work, to get more food, 
to keep the body alive, and so on in an endless 
chain. 

Nor, and perhaps this is the greatest curse of 
all, is there any pleasure in the work, for it is of 
too monotonous a nature; it affords no oppor- 
tunity for either self-expression or self-develop- 
ment. Consequently there is no self to be ex- 
pressed, no self to be developed; man ceases to be 
man, and becomes a mere animal. The only 
pleasures that can be enjoyed are physical pleas- 
ures, and of the physical pleasures those that are 
most degrading are often most enjoyed. Some 
time ago I saw a letter from an educated man who 
had gone to work as a common laborer, in order 
that he might study the conditions, under which 
so many of his fellows had to live. He boarded 
in a house with other laborers, and he testified 
that ninety per cent of his house-mates got drunk 
once a week, and that as they sat at table it was 
unusual for five minutes to pass without an ob- 
scene jest. 

And then there is a certain grace, finish, polish 
and pervasive charm, which people cannot easily 
acquire, except by a certain amount of leisure 
from drudgery and scrambling cares. We may 
say that this is not essential, and perhaps does 
not even matter very much, but in our inmost 



aO ULTIMATE IDEALS 

hearts we know that it does matter; that it is 
this beauty of perception and proportion that 
attracts us, as nothing else does. The other day 
I read a story, in which the wife of the principal 
character experiences the shock of discovering 
that her husband had made money by questionable 
means. When she reproaches him with it, he re- 
plies, " You know very well that you would not 
have looked at me if I had always been poor. I 
grant that you can get along without the things 
that money buys, but you wanted the kind of man 
that it takes a certain amount of money to make." 

Yes, it may be a sad truth, but it is a truth. 
Most of us, if we are high-minded, can get along 
without the things that money buys, but we de- 
mand as our friends the kind of men and women 
that it usually takes a certain amount of money 
to make. Of course we have all known simple 
country people who, by their natural kindliness 
and sympathy on the one hand, and acute ob- 
servation on the other, have won their way to 
our hearts. We have felt that this natural essen- 
tial culture was much better than any acquired 
culture. But the one does not necessarily exclude 
the other, and there is no denying the fact that 
the acquired culture greatly enhances the value 
of the natural culture, that the educated man, 
who works out far-reaching problems, is of more 
worth to the world, than the mere hewer of wood 
and drawer of water. 

Moreover it is just the temperament that, under 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 21 

favorable circumstances, might have been artistic 
and contributed something of permanent beauty 
to the world, that is most likely to break down 
under monotonous toil in an uncongenial environ- 
ment. It is a mistake to comfort ourselves with 
the thought that real genius will always conquer 
circumstances ; it will not. No doubt there have 
been many mute, inglorious Miltons. Many a 
struggling genius has prayed Sidney Lanier's 
prayer, " Only bread, dear Lord, not my will, but 
Thy decree, and then leisure to write my poems," 
and the prayer has not been answered, the world 
has been deprived of the poems. 

I know of no sadder passage in all literature 
than one to be found in Zangwill's story, " The 
Master." The hero, the son of a poor, ignorant 
family, has become a world-renowned painter, and 
has fallen in love with a beautiful woman, made 
more beautiful by all that money can buy. And 
then " the thought of his mother came up from 
dim recesses of memory, and he was jealous of 
Eleanor for her sake, jealous of her beauty, her 
breeding, her wealth; jealous of all that made her 
different from his mother, of all that made her 
life fuller, freer, higher, richer, — of all, in fine, 
that made him love her." For it had suddenly 
dawned upon him that, after all, his wretched 
mother had the same temperament that Eleanor 
had, only circumstances had brought out all that 
was lovely in Eleanor, all that was unlovely in 
his mother. 



22 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

And then in these days most men and women 
have to depend, not only upon their own labor 
for their daily bread, but upon another man^s 
will for a chance to labor, and doubtless this often 
means great curtailment of freedom of thought 
and speech, and of the development that comes 
with such freedom. " The only time a fellow like 
me can have an opinion," a laboring man was 
heard to remark, " is when he is in bed." The 
other day I heard of the principal of a school of 
whom it was said, " She would have had the high- 
est possible ideals if only she had had a proper 
financial backing." It is to be feared that there 
are many people similarly placed. 

When we consider all these things, we come to 
see, that so far from exalting poverty, it is right 
that the great end of civilization for this genera- 
tion should be, as it is coming more and more to 
be, to abolish poverty, to do away not only with 
debasing and degrading conditions, but also to 
set men free from hopeless drudgery, to provide 
a certain amount of leisure and beauty for all, 
together with the training that is necessary for 
a proper appreciation of leisure and beauty. It 
is right that he who will not labor should not 
eat, but it is a disgrace to our civilization that 
he who is willing to labor should not have the 
chance to do so, and that he who does labor should 
often have the chance to eat so little. Such a 
man is entitled not only to corn and house room, 
but to what Emerson calls Athenian corn, and 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 23 

Roman house room, and we who do have these 
things should never be quite happy in our posses- 
sion of them, until all can share them with us. 

But if neither wealth nor poverty in itself 
brings salvation, neither is there any salvation 
in middle-classness. I used to think the prayer of 
Agur, " Give me neither poverty nor riches," quite 
ideal, and for myself it is still what I want. But 
as a matter of fact when one lives in a community 
composed entirely of middle-class people, one finds 
their lives no more ideal than those of the very 
poor, or those of the very rich. I will grant that, 
as a class, there is probably a higher average of 
respectability among them, than is to be found 
among either the rich or the poor. They have 
less tendency to physical vice, but I am inclined 
to think that, except as the middle class includes 
professional people, there is less aspiration, less 
lifting up of the heart among them, than there is 
among either rich or poor. 

For the God of the middle-class is too often 
respectability, and having attained that, there is 
no more to be desired. They have fewer vices 
than either the rich or the poor, but on the other 
hand, there is frequently a smugness and self-satis- 
faction among them, due to the fact that their 
virtue is chiefly negative. And with this smugness 
there is often associated a certain pretentiousness 
and artificiality. It seems as though they had 
lost the naturalness and simplicity of the lower 
classes, without gaining the naturalness and sim- 



24 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

plicitj of the upper classes. Since such people 
have so little in the way of positive virtue, it 
would be almost a relief to find more positive vice 
among them. " I would that thou wert cold or 
hot." One is never enthusiastic about them, never 
animated with a desire to be like them, for they 
are not themselves enthusiastic, and their virtue, 
while it may be orderly, is not beautiful, and their 
culture, like their goodness, is secondhand and 
conventional, and therefore uninspiring. 

The difficulty with them is that they lack ambi- 
tion; instead of struggling after more victory, 
they are content to sit down and enjoy the petty 
victories of the past. They are not " pressing 
forward to the things that are before," for they 
seem to interpret St. Paul's words " I have learned 
in whatsoever state I am therewith to be con- 
tent," as applying not only to the material state, 
but also to the intellectual and spiritual state. 
And they are content with their present stage not 
only as a stage, but as an end, and to be content 
with anything as an end is death. They are what 
a friend of mine called " too damned happy." 
And the adjective was perfectly correct, for he 
who is absolutely content with himself and his 
surroundings is damned, damned or condemned 
not to grow. 

For human nature inspires only as it aspires, 
turning its back upon every success attained, to 
pursue another higher and better still. When the 
crown falls upon one victory, it should only en- 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 25 

courage us for the harder tug still to come. We 
gain one height, only that we may obtain a better 
view of the height that lies above it, and of the 
path by which we may ascend to it. 

After all, does not the very expression " a dead 
level " imply that any level is deadening? Vari- 
ety is the spice of life, and I believe that for life 
to be sufficiently interesting we need this variety, 
not only in temperament, character and abilities, 
but also in material possessions. Even in Wil- 
liam Morris' ideal commonwealth, where every- 
body could have everything that he wanted, some 
people lived in big houses, and some people lived 
in little houses, because they preferred them. I 
prefer the little house for myself because it best 
expresses me, but I enjoy visiting in the big houses 
of some of my friends. And within certain limits 
the stately homes of England and America have 
their place,^ are a real addition to the spiritual 
life of the nation, especially when, as is more and 
more becoming the case, they are more or less 
open to the public. There is room for the beauty 
of Nature which is, or should be, free to all, but 
there is also room for the beauty of Art, which 
is sometimes very expensive. 

1 Of course I do not mean in any sense to indorse what 
Ruskin describes as "that curious laying out of ground, 
that beautiful arrangement of dwelling-house for man and 
beast, by which we have grouse and blackcock, so many 
brace to the acre, and men and women — so many brace 
to the garret." 



26 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

"WTiat then should be our attitude toward 
wealth? The mediaeval saints seem to have taken 
the same position toward material possessions, 
that they took toward the human body ; they 
regarded both as impure and unholy things, and 
thought it the duty of the Christian to despise 
them. But the body is not an impure and unholy 
thing, it is the temple of the living God, and 
neither is wealth in itself an unholy thing. It is 
true that temptations come to us from the world 
and from the flesh as well as from the devil, but 
the world and the flesh are not in themselves the 
devil, and to think of them as such is simply to 
blaspheme against the God who made them, as 
the highest manifestation of Himself. 

No, a man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of things that he possesseth, any more than a 
man's life consisteth in bodily strength. A man's 
life consisteth in the full and free exercise of 
his faculties. But for the full and free exer- 
cise of the faculties a certain amount of physical 
strength, and generally a certain amount of 
worldly wealth is necessary, and he who fails to 
do what he can to obtain both the health and the 
possessions, necessary to the full exercise of his 
God-given powers, is not only not praiseworthy, 
but even criminal. 

It is true that some of the loveliest and most 
useful persons that the world has ever seen have 
been among those who, having found it impossible 
to obtain physical health, have accepted that fact, 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 27 

and have found even better self-expression in sick- 
ness than in health. And so the absolutely love- 
liest and most useful persons that the world has 
ever known have been those who, like Jesus and 
St. Francis, have recognized that their own 
peculiar genius could find its best expression in 
poverty, and so have deliberately chosen it. And 
not very far below this class have been some who, 
having found poverty inevitable, have accepted 
it cheerfully. 

But when the physical or material state in which 
we happen to be seems to us to be such as to 
interfere with our best development, our best ex- 
pression, our best service, we should not be con- 
tent to remain in it, if it is possible to change it. 
Of course if we cannot change it, then we must 
believe that the development and service that seem 
to us to be best, are not really best and be satis- 
fied " not to serve God more, which meaneth other- 
wise, than as God please." 

And just as there are times in our lives when 
we may have to concentrate our energies upon 
obtaining physical health, so there are times in 
our lives when some of us may have to concentrate 
our energies upon obtaining material wealth ; only 
both should be regarded as means, and not ends. 
We sometimes hear a mother say " I am much 
more interested just now in my child's physical 
development than I am in his intellectual prog- 
ress." And she may be quite right in feeling as 
she does. Dollars are more important than pen- 



28 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

nies, yet there is truth in the saying " Take care 
of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of 
themselves." So the intellectual and the spiritual 
are more important than the physical and ma- 
terial, but it is sometimes true of some people that 
if they can be made to take care of the physical 
and material, the intellectual and spiritual will 
take care of themselves. 

No, a man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things that he possesseth. But while life 
is not made up of things, life does use things ; 
and it is not right wholly to ignore this fact. 
Wealth ministers directly to the body, but the 
body, rightly used, ministers to the spirit, and it 
is right for us to want and to try to get as much 
wealth as is necessary, to make our particular 
bodies minister, in the best way, to our particular 
spirits. If the bread that we eat, the pleasures 
that we enjoy, become not only animal strength 
and animal spirit, but courage, endurance, 
thought, imagination and love, then we have a 
right to just as much bread, to just as much 
pleasure as can be so transmuted. Whatever we 
can honestly have that helps us, comforts us, en- 
ables us to do our work better, enables us to love 
more, we have a right to have. 

I once heard a man ask William Morris whether 
he honestly thought that a chimney-sweep should 
be paid as much as a university professor. Mor- 
ris replied, somewhat sarcastically, " If in order 
to do his work properly, the professor needs to 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 29 

eat more than the chimney-sweep, then he should 
be paid more." If by eating he meant, as Mr. 
Tulliver would say, " not exactly eating, but all 
that that signifies," the answer was a correct one. 
We are taught to pray " Give us this day our 
daily bread," and it is right that we should 
have our daily bread, and enjoy it. " Man does 
not live by bread alone," but man cannot live 
without bread; so it is right that he should both 
pray for it and work for it. Only the mind and 
heart should be set chiefly on work and love, not 
on bread. 

It is sometimes assumed that Jesus meant that 
all men should be poor, but a close reading of the 
Gospel story does not lead to this conclusion. He 
Himself was not an ascetic. He came eating and 
drinking, and they said " Behold a gluttonous 
man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and 
sinners." He prayed not that His disciples 
should be taken out of the world, but that they 
should be kept from the evil that is in the world. 
For, as Phillips Brooks has so well put it. He 
did not believe that perfection could be realized 
by " cutting off everything which by completing 
life should confuse it ; " it is not so easy and 
simple as that. He had friends among both the 
rich and the poor, for He was a partisan of 
neither wealth nor poverty. Neither was good 
nor bad in itself, either was good as it made the 
man good, bad as it made the man bad. 

If He chose the life of a poor man for Himself, 



30 ULTIMATE ffiEALS 

it was because His own particular nature, His own 
particular genius found its best expression in 
poverty. Other men's natures, other men's 
geniuses, might find their best expression in wealth, 
and He had no quarrel with them. It is true that, 
when He sent His disciples out to teach and to 
preach, He told them that they were not to take 
two coats, but that was because unnecessary lug- 
gage would impede them in their mission, not be- 
cause there is anything wrong in having two coats. 
That is the test whether wealth is right for us, 
will it help us or hinder us in our mission? We 
are put here to work out our own salvation, but 
what is salvation for you is not necessarily salva- 
tion for me, and therefore the ways by which you 
find salvation may differ, and rightly differ, from 
the ways by which I find it. 

It is sometimes said that Jesus taught that we 
should sell all that we have and give to the poor, 
but that also is not true. He told one young 
man to do that, but that, I think, was because for 
that particular young man. He had a plan of life 
with which wealth would have interfered. Jesus 
" beholding him, loved him," and wanted him for 
an apostle, and in the apostle's life great pos- 
sessions would not help, but hinder. It seems to 
me that it is probable that all through his min- 
istry, Jesus felt the need of one apostle with a 
little broader culture than the others, to do the 
work which St. Paul was afterwards called upon 
to do. When He saw this man He was drawn 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 31 

toward him ; he felt that he was perhaps the man 
whom He was seeking, and so He offered him the 
greatest opportunity which was ever offered to 
any man since the world began, an opportunity 
perhaps to fill the places of St. Paul and St. John 
combined, and the young man refused, because he 
had great possessions. For if possessions some- 
times help us to self-realization, they are just as 
likely to prevent self-realization, and this is the 
saddest instance on record of their having done so. 

What then is the conclusion of the whole mat- 
ter? " A man's life consisteth not in the abund- 
ance of the things that he possesseth." No. A 
man's life consisteth in the full and free exercise 
of his faculties. It is right that we should have 
food and drink, but we are here to satisfy needs 
that are more to us than food and drink, we are 
here to find ourselves, to find our own souls, the 
soul that is greater than what we have, than what 
we do, or even than what we think. And that is 
another way of saying that we are here to find 
God in our souls, to glorify the God who is within 
us, and to prepare to enjoy Him forever. It is 
right and even our duty to do what we can to 
provide the worldly goods that are necessary for 
that full and free exercise of our faculties, which 
is essential if we would find ourselves, and having 
done that, to think no more about material things. 

Some men, and these are often of the highest 
type, have faculties for whose development very 
little, in the way of worldly possessions, is needed. 



32 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

Others have faculties for whose proper develop- 
ment more is required. Some authors have writ- 
ten better when surrounded by beautiful things, 
others have preferred to write in perfectly bare 
rooms; that is, some have found beautiful sur- 
roundings an inspiration, others have found them 
a distraction. It is our right to labor for what- 
ever we find inspiring, our duty to banish from 
our lives whatever proves distracting. 

But not only is it right that every man should 
labor for whatever wealth is necessary for the 
exercise of his faculties, but there are those whose 
faculties are such, that it is impossible to exercise 
them fully and freely without getting rich, and 
even perhaps very rich. If such men realize the 
immorality of seeking to acquire wealth by win- 
ning it from others, rather- than by earning it by 
service to their fellowmen, if by enriching them- 
selves they enrich others also, then they may be 
among the most useful members of society. 

Great captains of industry are as necessary as 
great rulers, but they are no more entitled to all 
the profits of the industry which they control, than 
rulers are to all the wealth of the nation which 
they rule. But if the object of their lives is to 
make gold and silver as common stones, not in 
their own palaces, but in Jerusalem, if incidentally 
the precious metals abound in their own palaces 
also, there is no fault to be found with them. 

It is even right that they should enjoy the sen- 
sation of making money. Every one enjoys the 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT 33 

sensation of exercising his faculties successfully. 
But the business man, the chief object of whose life 
is money, is on a par with the clergyman, the chief 
object of whose life is popularity. To a certain 
extent the clergyman has a right to enjoy his 
popularity, but only as it comes as a by-product 
of service. So the business man has a right to 
enjoy getting rich, but only when it comes as a 
by-product of service. And when wealth has not 
been created by its owner but inherited, then the 
responsibility is even greater. Such a man is in 
the position of a servant who has been .paid in 
advance, therefore failure on his part to serve is 
especially disgraceful. And whatever we have, no 
matter how obtained, is ours, not to keep, but to 
share. Even the child that we create is not our 
own, it must be given to the world. 



Ill 

THEY THAT MOURN 

" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted ! " Yes, happy are they that mourn, 
for true happiness, the goal of life, can never be 
reached except through mourning. No one who 
has really mourned and been comforted ever 
doubts this. He knows that now for the first time, 
he is truly happy ; what he called happiness before 
was merely light -heartedness. " Life," my old 
Oxford teacher, York Powell used to say, " would 
be a poor, thin thing without sorrow." 

" Man is bom to trouble, as the sparks fly up- 
ward." Suffering is our birthright as human be- 
ings, and I believe that there is no one who would 
willingly give up this birthright, for it is only 
through suffering that we become great, enter into 
fellowship with man and God, and so go on unto 
perfection. Was not Jesus the perfect man, that 
is, the man whose fellowship with man and God 
was perfect, because He was the Man of Sorrows 
and acquainted with grief.? Therefore, we do well 
to pray with St. Paul that we may know the fel- 
lowship of His suffering. To suffering are we 
called, and we none of us want to miss our calling. 

34 



THEY THAT MOURN 35 

Even little children feel the need of sorrow in 
life, for have you never noticed how many of them 
love sad stories? Is not this because even they 
have it dimly in mind that life is not complete 
without suffering? So until sorrow has come to 
them in life they must have it in books. For how- 
ever much we may dread the sad experiences of 
life, we none of us want to miss the blessing prom- 
ised to those who mourn. And we all bear testi- 
mony to the fact that there can be no real joy 
without suffering, for when we ourselves are in 
sorrow and want comfort, we never turn to those 
who are happy as we once were happy, but only 
to those who have had great sorrow, and whose 
sorrow has been turned into joy, has shed such 
light upon their souls that they are able to shed 
light upon other souls. 

" How sad," we sometimes say, " to see the lines 
of suffering come upon a young face ! '* Yes, but 
how much sadder it is when these lines never come ! 
" Shall our pity," says Maeterlinck, " go forth to 
him who at times will weep on the shore of an 
infinite sea, or to the other who smiles all his life 
without cause alone in his little room? " Yes, 
it is better to weep on the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion in the company of apostles and prophets, in 
the company of Emanuel Himself, than to smile 
alone in the valley. 

" The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, 
blessed be the name of the Lord ! " That is the 
comfort, still to be able to say " Blessed be the 



36 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

name of the Lord " ; to realize that what we loved 
has been taken from us onl}^ because something 
better was in store for us, that our angels have 
left us only that archangels may come. To have 
proved, too, the strength of our own souls, for 
now that we know that the soul is strong enough 
to bear and to bless, we can face the future without 
fear. Yes, it pays even to have had to cry out, 
" My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ! " 
just to prove that it is not true, that our God 
has not forsaken us. For it is only as we have 
uttered that cry, that we know certainly that it 
is not true, that our God can never forsake us. 
Having descended into hell, and found that He is 
there, we know that He is everywhere. 

" These things," so the King James' version 
makes Jesus say, " are the beginning of sorrow." 
The Revised Version reads, " These things are the 
beginning of travail." And can there be any sat- 
isfying explanation of sorrow save that it is the 
birth-pangs of the spiritual life; what possible 
justification of pain can there be save that from 
it new life is born? But it rests with us to deter- 
mine whether the new life shall be born, whether 
our sorrow shall remain sorrow, whether it shall 
become nothing but pettiness and littleness, sepa- 
rating us from man and God, or whether it shall 
be transformed into the joy from whence new 
life is born, fuller life for ourselves and for all 
those about us. 

And when we have succeeded in transforming our 



THEY THAT MOURN 37 

sorrow into joy, then we see how perfectly fitted 
our particular burden was to the back. When 
affliction first comes to us, we are tempted to cry 
out, " Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow ? " 
But when it is over we say, " I am glad that I 
had my own cross, my own burden to bear, and not 
somebody else's. Only my own cross could have 
strengthened me for my own life." So we thank 
God for the sorrow and for the joy that has come 
with it. And having borne so much in the past, 
we know that we shall be able to bear whatever 
may come to us in the future. 

Mourn for what.^^ Mourn for anything in such 
a way that it throws us upon the power which 
makes for righteousness and happiness, the Power 
which in one sense is not ourselves, and in another 
sense is our highest, truest self ; the Power in whom 
we live and move and have our being. And mourn 
for anything in such a way as throws us more 
upon each other, or makes us understand each 
other better. For what is the blessing that comes 
to those who mourn? Simply, that through suf- 
fering, rightly accepted, we enter into closer rela- 
tions with man and God; that is after we have 
suffered awhile, we are made perfect, stablished, 
strengthened, settled. 

For again we must remind ourselves that the 
perfect man is he whose relations with God and 
man are perfect, he who loves the Lord his God 
with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his 
mind, with all his strength, and his neighbor as 



38 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

himself. Love and love only is the fulfillment of 
the law. But we only love as we understand, and 
we only come to a full understanding as we suffer. 
The Everlasting Arms are always underneath, but 
we do not always appreciate that fact until sorrow 
presses us down into the underneath. Then the 
comfort is that we enter into fellowship with the 
Comforter, understand the heart of God. 

But not only is there very little fellowship with 
God without suffering, there is also very little real 
fellowship with man. It is in times of suffering 
that we " cry unto our fellow, and our fellow hears 
and comes, and we mourn together under the sun, 
until again we laugh together, and are but half 
sorry between us." ^ And when, as often hap- 
pens, he who hath no fellow in times of sorrow 
gains a fellow, surely his mourning has brought 
him the richest blessing that can come to any one. 
No wonder that his sorrow soon becomes but a 
story of sorrow, a story with the happiest of end- 
ings. For " it is fellowship that is Heaven, the 
lack of fellowship that is Hell, fellowship that is 
life, the lack of fellowship that is death." And it 
is not only the particular precious fellowship that 
often comes to us in time of mourning, it is also 
that through mourning we enter into fellowship, 
because we enter into understanding, with all who 
mourn, that is with everybody. 

In " Ferishtah's Fancies," Browning has put this 

1 William Morris' "Vision of John Ball." 



THEY THAT MOURN 39 

all in a nutshell. Of the wise Dervish the question 
is asked: 

** Wherefore should any evil hap to man, 
From ache of flesh to agony of soul. 
Since God's all-mercy mates all-potency? " 

In reply to which Ferishtah asks 

" What were the bond 'twixt man and man, dost 

judge. 
Pain once abolished? " 

He then proceeds to ask the inquirer what he 
thinks of the reigning Shah. To which the reply 
is that he finds nothing to admire in him, he is 
Shah only in virtue of the fact that he happened 
to be the eldest son of the last Shah. And al- 
though Ferishtah calls his attention to various 
things in the Shah that he might admire, all fail 
to move him until he tells him that he is wasting 
away with internal ulcer. Then the scomer be- 
comes all sympathy, is eager to suggest remedies. 
From which change in attitude Ferishtah draws 
the conclusion 

** Put pain from out the world, what room were left 

For thanks to God, for love to man? , 

/Thanks to God, 

And love to man, from man to take these away. 
And what is man worth ? " 

Since there is no growth save growth in under- 
standing, growth in love, growth in understanding 



40 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

and loving God, growth in understanding and lov- 
ing man, and since full growth and understanding 
can come only through suffering, it seems to me 
wrong, nothing short of blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God within us, to say, 
as I have known people to say, " I will steel myself 
against suffering, I will not allow myself to suffer, 
I will not allow myself to feel except as I absolutely 
have to." There are even those who go so far as 
to refuse to bestow their affection upon people 
whom they would really like to love, because they 
are afraid of the suffering that it might involve. 
To the extent that one is able to carry out such a 
resolution, one has cut one^s self off from fellowship 
with man and with God. That is one has failed 
to fulfil the purpose for which one was created. 
For we were meant to live and to taste the fulness 
of life! 

Among the folk songs which Carmen Sylva has 
collected in " The Bard of the Dimbo Vitza," there 
is one entitled " The Draught of Tears," the story 
of the man who, having swallowed his own tears, 
has no longer any feeling left for anything or 
anybody. 

" For he doth thirst no more^ 

Therefore for other's thirst he has no pity. 

He lets the rain lie heavy on his cloak. 

And blesses not the rain ; 

Sees the brooks flow, and blesses not the brooks. 

He gazes on the well's cool deeps, 

Nor blesses its cool deeps. 



THEY THAT MOURN 41 

For this is he who drank of his own tears. 

His thirst is qenched forever; 

He let them trickle down into his glass, 

Let the sun glitter on them, and the moon 

Mirror herself therein. 

And sun and moon both said, " What crystal water ! " 

Then did he put it to his lips and drink! 

And his lips spake, " What fiery, burning water ! " 

This is the man who drank of his own tears." 

Is it possible to imagine a life a more hopeless 
failure than this.^ It is true that sometimes the 
strength of the will, perverted though it be, of the 
man who has drunk of his own tears, his power 
to accomplish his purpose, calls forth a certain 
sort of admiration, but how inaccessible he is ! He 
is generally a correct man, at least he is free from 
physical vice. He is frequently, in a worldly way, 
a successful man ; indeed his motive in not allowing 
himself to feel has often been the fear that too 
great feeling would interfere with his efficiency, his 
success in life. But is there any real success in 
life apart from loving and making one's self loved ? 
And is not the merely being accessible to all more, 
infinitely more, than worldly success, or even than 
doing tangible things for other people .? 

I do not mean of course that one should waste 
one's self in diffuse, meaningless sociability, or in 
ineffectual, fruitless feeling; but I do mean that 
somehow each of us should make it clear that for 
us to live is to love. The expression that love 
takes will, of course, differ with different people, 



42 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

and we must be careful not to condemn any one 
merely because he follows not with us, but in some 
way every one should make it clear that for him 
the object of life is love, and the expression of 
love. 

" For life, with all it yields of joy and woe. 
And hope and fear, believe the aged friend, 
Is just our chance o* the prize of learning love. 
How love might be, hath been indeed and is." 

To refuse the joy and the pain, the hope and 
the fear, is to refuse the chance of the prize, that 
is, to refuse our chance of love, our chance of life, 
for love is life. 

And yet, on the other hand, we must not give 
ourselves up to the luxury of enjoying sorrow, we 
must not enshrine ourselves in it, we must not make 
it an object of morbid self-gratification. It is cer- 
tainly one of the good signs of the present century 
that people, especially women, no longer feel that 
it is a fine and noble thing to cherish grief, that 
Maggie Tulliver's Aunt Pullet has gone out of 
fashion. The objection to such sentimental 
mourning is not only that it is weakening to our- 
selves, and depressing to others, unfitting both the 
mourners, and those with whom they come in con- 
tact, for doing their best work in the world, but 
also that it is false. God is a Spirit, and they 
who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and 
in truth. The whole life should be a worship of 
God, mourning quite as much as anything else. 



THEY THAT MOURN 43 

But nothing which is not in spirit and in truth 
can be worship. Nothing can be worship that 
leads to nothing, that does not bear fruit. 

Should we mourn for sin.'^ When I ask the 
girls in my Bible classes what they should mourn 
for, they usually put sin first, but I suspect that 
that is because they think it the correct thing to 
say. We certainly do not mourn for sin as our 
fathers did, we no longer have the strong sense of 
sin that they had. Is this a loss.^^ Frankly, I 
think it a great gain. There are just two temp- 
tations which seem to me to be the most dangerous 
to which we are ever subjected: First, the temp- 
tation to be so well satisfied with ourselves, that 
we have no disposition to improve; and second, 
the disposition to be so ill satisfied with ourselves, 
that we lack the strength and the courage to 
improve. 

I remember that when I was a little girl my 
father had occasion to correct me for something. 
Because I was inclined to take any reproof that 
came from him overmuch to heart, he was very 
timid about it. So he took me upon his lap and 
began, oh ! so tenderly ! " My little girl," and 
when I asked what the trouble was, he said, " I 
would rather that you had not done so and so." 
When I said that I was sorry, he replied, " I 
don't want you to be sorry, I only want you 
not to do it again." That is the kind of father 
God is. He does not want us to be sorry. He 
only wants us not to do it again. 



44 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

For sin, like disease, is to be dwelt upon, only 
long enough to understand it, and get rid of it. 
We must understand it, not only that we may 
get rid of it in ourselves and others, but also that 
through this understanding we may come into 
closer fellowship, not only with God who forgives 
sin, but also with man who sins. For it is 
through understanding our own sin that we come 
to understand the sin of others, and so enter into 
fellowship with our fellow sinners, and with God 
who understands and forgives us all. That is 
God's purpose for us in all the mourning that He 
sends to us, deeper fellowship. And we can only 
miss this purpose as we let mourning over dis- 
appointment make us bitter, or mourning over 
sin make us weak. 



IV 

THE MEEK 

" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth!" 

Here is another example of the fact that be- 
cause we have always been familiar with the 
Beatitudes, we take them as a matter of course, 
almost as axiomatic, and yet when we stop to 
think about them, we realize that they are not 
at all self-evident. Indeed most of them, if we 
should hear them for the first time, would be ex- 
tremely surprising and puzzling, and perhaps 
none of them would seem more of an enigma than 
this one. For myself, I had said this Beatitude 
thoughtlessly for years, and when I first really 
did give it a little superficial thought, I found it 
unworthy, and even provoking, " the least of all 
the Beatitudes, and not meet to be called a Beati- 
tude." 

In the first place, in the face of Jesus' constant 
teaching about riches, the blessing promised, to 
inherit the earth, seemed a rather doubtful good, 
and at least altogether out of keeping with the 
other blessings promised. Everywhere else the 
blessing was spiritual, here it was material. 

45' 



46 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

Moreover in actual life, this blessing, such as it 
is, does not seem to be realized. Everywhere we 
see that if inheriting the earth means getting rich, 
it is the pushing, aggressive man who does it, not 
the meek, patient man. 

And if the reward is a doubtful blessing, so the 
quality to be rewarded seemed to me rather a 
questionable virtue. When I ask my girls what 
meekness is, they sometimes say mean-spiritedness. 
And I do think that it is something like this that 
we commonly have in mind when we use the word, 
and we none of us really believe that mean-spirit- 
edness is a virtue. Indeed meekness, as we com- 
monly understand it, instead of arousing our ad- 
miration, generally throws us into a more or less 
violent state of irritation. We associate it with 
the worm that never turns, or with the ass who 
is too stupid and phlegmatic to resent the most 
unjust treatment, and we do not admire either 
animal. 

Indeed, when I heard of a drunken brute, who 
gave as his reason for beating his wife, that he 
was tired of seeing her around looking so meek, 
I confess to feeling some sympathy with him. 
Workers among the poor tell us that it is the 
meek, patient wife, whose sole object seems to be 
to please her husband, who is most often abused. 
One man is reported to have said, " No, I don't 
never strike my missis. You see she would strike 
back, and though I could easily get the best of 
her, I don't like no rumpus like that." And I 



THE MEEK 47 

know of a district nurse who, bearing this in mind, 
advises the women in her district never to take a 
blow, without in some way getting even with their 
husbands. The results of acting upon this advice 
appear generally to be excellent, blows soon cease. 

And when we get higher up in the social scale, 
we do not find the member of the family who 
has no life of her own, who is at every one's beck 
and call, the one who is most loved or admired. 
Too often the tendency is to take advantage of 
such people, and then, instead of thanking them, 
to snub them. We are so sure of their attentions 
that we are not at all grateful for them ; whatever 
they do, we expect more. 

And then although we may like the thing that 
they do, the manner in which they do it is often 
offensive, for their very anxiety to please makes 
them shy, clumsy and awkward. It seems as 
though their very desire for love makes it impos- 
sible for them to win it. Moreover, they appear 
never to expect to win it. They seem to feel 
that they do not deserve it. We prefer that they 
should be a little less humble, a little less conscious 
that love is not for them, and then perhaps they 
would obtain it. And all the time they irritate 
us the more, because they are so good and so 
self-sacrificing, that they put us in the wrong. 
There seems to be no excuse for not liking them, 
but we cannot. Sometimes, like the drunken hus- 
band, we get tired of seeing them around looking 
so meek, and we speak to them with a severity 



48 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

that we know they have not deserved. They take 
it with an air of meek resignation, as though they 
were conscious of having merited it, or at least 
as though it was what they expected. We would 
prefer that they should get angry with us, and 
give us the rebuke that we know that we ought to 
have. 

But are we altogether wrong in feeling as we 
do about these so-called meek people .^^ I think 
that a careful analysis of the case will show that 
we are not. In the first place, while such people 
submit to everybody, do things for everybody, 
they do not appear to actively enjoy doing any- 
thing; they are utterly lacking in enthusiasm. 
Their attitude is simply that of submitting to 
what is put upon them; they do what they do 
either from a mistaken idea of duty, or else be- 
cause they crave a love, that because of their 
lack of personality, they can never win. We only 
love one who is somebody, no one loves a nobody. 

That is the great trouble with them, they are 
nobodies, they are absolutely lacking in the initia- 
tive which is the first essential of personality. 
They have no scheme of life at all, no definite 
things that they want to do, no definite path on 
which they wish to advance, no definite self which 
they wish to develop. Of course there is such a 
thing as having too unyielding a scheme of life, 
but perhaps it is no worse to think too much 
about the self than it is to have no self to think 



THE MEEK 49 

about, no worse to be selfish than it is to have no 
self to be selfish. 

And after all society is not so much in danger 
from the really bad people, as it is from the weak, 
vague, drifting people, who having no initiative, 
no minds of their own, are open to suggestions 
of all kinds. If there is danger of thinking of 
ourselves more highly than we ought to think, 
there is at least an equal danger of thinking of 
ourselves more lowly than we ought to think. It 
has been well said that one cannot argue on one's 
knees, therefore that it is right that he who is 
on his knees to everybody should be respected by 
nobody. Indeed, we are coming more and more 
to see that if meek resignation means stupid or 
thoughtless resignation, it is a thing not to be 
admired, but to be condemned. We must accept 
even the laws of God, not as the servant who 
knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but as the 
friend, who knows something, and who is trying 
to know more. We must dare to search and 
question. 

But if meek people of this type have any object 
in life at all, it is simply to please, or, worse still, 
just not to offend. And generally speaking the 
inoffensive person is the most offensive person of 
all. It may be all very well for the dog to live 
simply to please his master, for we do not expect 
him to have a scheme of life of his own. It may 
be quite right for the dog to live chiefly to gratify 



50 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

his master's whims, but we think it no more right 
for the man to live wholly to gratify another's 
whims, than it would be to live wholly for the 
gratification of his own whims. If one is self- 
sacrificing it should be for a real purpose. We 
should love our neighbor as ourselves; but we 
should love ourselves wisely, and so we should love 
our neighbor wisely. 

Just as we are to love the Lord our God with 
all our minds, so in our love for ourselves and our 
neighbor, the mind should have its part. The 
command " Whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them," is to be inter- 
preted not what ye would when ye are whimsical, 
but what ye would, when ye use your best judg- 
ment. In what we do for our neighbor, we are 
under the same obligation to use our judgment 
as we are in what we do for ourselves. Only very 
young children like people who live solely to please 
them. And there are even children who, having 
attained their personality at an early age, despise 
such people. The truth is we feel that one who 
lives simply to gratify our whims, not only has 
no personality of his own, but has a very low 
estimate of our personality. For if we are really 
developed people, we do not consider it a matter 
of importance that our whims should be gratified, 
and we are offended with any one who supposes 
that we do. 

And the sympathy of these people is often quite 
as bungling as their eflPorts to please. For hav- 



THE MEEK 51 

ing no personality of their own, they have no 
understanding of the personality of another, they 
sympathize with one person in exactly the same 
way that they sympathize with another. Here 
the dog has a great advantage over them, for he 
at least does not make the mistake of thinking 
that we are sad when we are not. He simply 
feels that we are sad or glad, and sympathizes 
with our moods, without asking what has pro- 
duced them; and then he cannot talk and say 
stupid things. The undeveloped person argues 
that what would make him sad, would make any 
one else sad, and so, having had what should make 
us sad, we must be sad. We, on the contrary, 
are perhaps not sad at all, or if we are, and do 
want sympathy, it must be expressed in the way 
in which our personality demands. We are not 
children, we sorrow not as the child sorrows, and 
it is not the child's or even the dog's sympathy 
that we want from the grown person. 

Yes, there is beauty in the giving of one's self, 
and it is only as we give ourselves that we can 
ever fully become ourselves, we must go out of 
ourselves to find ourselves. But before we can 
give, we must have something to give, we must in 
some manner at least become ourselves before we 
can give ourselves. We cannot fulfill our duty 
to others, except as we have first fulfilled our 
duty to ourselves, have done our utmost to make 
ourselves as worth while as possible. 

" Among the many beautiful things that turn 



52 ULTIMATE ffiEALS 

through mistaken use to utter evil," says Ruskin, 
" I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek 
and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be 
named as the f atallest." For when we starve our 
own souls in order to give to other souls, we 
often find not only that there is not enough for 
them and for us, but even that there is absolutely 
nothing for either of us. So the wise virgins were 
not selfish, but wise, when they refused to give 
their oil to the foolish virgins. It is possible for 
us to use our lamps to lighten the pathway of 
others, but to try to give them of our oil is simply 
to squander it. Too many mothers have not 
given themselves so much as wasted themselves, 
ministering to their children ; for children want 
not so much what their mothers can do for them, 
they want their mother. Love should go out of 
itself to find itself, not to lose itself. 

The truth is that the present generation has 
put a bad meaning into the word meek, just as it 
has put a bad meaning into the word pious. True 
meekness, the meekness that Jesus commends, is 
the exact opposite of the stupid aimlessness that 
now passes, or fails to pass, under that name. 
So far from the meek man being the man who 
has no aim in life, he is rather the man who is 
all aim, the man whose mind is so set upon his 
aim that he entirely forgets himself, forgets to 
be exalted and forgets to be abased; he has 
neither false conceit, nor false modesty. 

And what is the aim.? Tagore, who has cast 



THE MEEK 63 

more illumination upon this subject than any one 
else has done, has well expressed it when he says : 
" The aim of the teachers of India was the realiza- 
tion of the soul, or in other words, gaining the 
world in perfect truth. When Jesus said, 
" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
earth " he meant this. He proclaimed the truth, 
that when man gets rid of his pride of self, then 
he comes into his true inheritance. No more has 
he to fight his way into his position in the world ! 
it is secure to him everywhere by the immortal 
right of his soul. Pride of self interferes with the 
proper function of the soul, which is to realize 
itself by perfecting its union with the world and 
the world's God." 

No, meekness is not the aimlessness that submits 
blindly to circumstances, to what we falsely call 
destiny ! It is rather the wisdom that controls 
circumstances, that controls destiny. At its low- 
est it is almost synonymous with self-control, or, 
as Henry Ward Beecher puts it, it is " the best 
side of a man under provocation, maintaining 
itself in the best mood, and thus controlling all 
men." At its highest it is the complete absorp- 
tion of the soul in high aims, that makes conscious 
self-control unnecessary; there seems to be no 
self to control, the man has lost himself in his 
aim, which is only another way of saying that he 
has lost himself in his God. 

One of our great men has recently made the 
statement that we despise a nation, as we despise 



54 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

an individual, who does not resent an insult. But 
do we despise the individual who does not resent 
an insult? I grant that there is a tendency to 
despise the man who is cowed by an insult; he 
gets on our nerves. But what about the man who 
is so occupied in what he is doing, that he simply 
does not know that he has been insulted? 

Some time ago I heard of a man who was serv- 
ing on an important commission. In expressing 
his opinion on the subject under debate he said 
something that so infuriated another member of 
the commission, that he struck him in the face 
with a roll of paper that he happened to have in 
his hand. But the speaker was so occupied in 
what he was saying that he did not even notice it, 
he just finished what he had to say. He could 
hardly be said to exercise self-control, for he 
scarcely knew that he had been struck. And he 
carried his point, for when he had finished, the 
whole commission, even the man that had struck 
him, acknowledged that he was right. 

He carried his point ! Herein is the clue to the 
meaning of the expression " to inherit the earth." 
For what is an heir? Is he not the man who is 
entitled to a certain inheritance, a certain place 
in the world? and he comes into his inheritance 
when he takes that place, accomplishes the thing 
that God meant him to do, fulfils God's ideal for 
him. Thus it is that the heir of God comes into 
his father's house, into his home. 

My old Wellesley teacher, Miss Morgan, used 



I 



THE MEEK 55 

to define home as the place where we can be our 
best. And when we stop to think of it, this is not 
really an unusual sense of the word, it is what we 
all mean when we use the expression " at home." 
We feel at home with a person, or in a place, 
when we are at our ease with that person, or in 
that place, and so able to be and to do our best. 
In that sense are we not all here in the world to 
find our home, in order that we may find our- 
selves? In the beginning God made a world for 
each separate man. He puts us here in order 
that each might find his own world, his own in- 
heritance, his own home. And it is only the meek 
who can fully find his home, and he will never fail 
to do so. For home, like the kingdom of heaven, 
is within us. 

To go back to Henry Ward Beecher's defini- 
tion, " Meekness is the best side of a man under 
provocation, maintaining himself in the best 
mood and thus controlling all men," the meek man 
controls all men, as the man whom I have cited 
did, because he makes them see that he is right, 
and thus he controls them not only outwardly, but 
inwardly. It is sometimes possible to control men 
outwardly by making them afraid of us, but in 
that case we have not controlled them, we have 
only controlled their actions. Indeed, he who 
obeys because he does not dare to disobey is al- 
ways in silent inward rebellion — in fact, any 
conscious obedience is, in a sense, rebellious. In 
order to really control others, we must first con- 



56 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

trol ourselves, hence real meekness differs little 
from wise self-control. 

But the man who is meek in the perverted sense 
in which the word was used at the beginning of 
this paper never controls any one, not even him- 
self, for he has no self to control. He has not 
controlled himself, but has repressed himself, until 
there is no self left, either to control or to re- 
press. Self-control differs from self-repression, 
in that it is used only as a means toward an end. 
Self-control means simply the subduing or the 
keeping within proper proportions of such in- 
stincts, or impulses, as there is a definite reason 
for subduing or guiding, but self-repression means 
an instinctive, perhaps an inherited, subduing of 
instincts and impulses, merely for the sake of sub- 
duing them, and that is nothing less than the re- 
pression or annihilation of life itself. The self 
has not been controlled, it has been destroyed, 
for when life ceases to be eager, spontaneous and 
enthusiastic, it ceases to be life at all. 

The truly meek are never the victims of their 
temperaments, but on the other hand they never 
seek to destroy their temperaments, for to de- 
stroy the temperament is to destroy the personal- 
ity. They never subdue themselves, they only 
subdue that which keeps them from being them- 
selves. They do not blindly submit to circum- 
stances, for there is a definite goal which they 
are striving to reach. From this goal they are 
turned by no obstacle which it is possible to over- 



THE MEEK 57 

come, but when the obstacles are really insur- 
mountable, they waste no strength bubbling in im- 
potent fury. And thus they reach their goal, for 
he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he 
that taketh a city, and he generally takes the 
city! 

For true meekness will always in the deepest 
sense control destiny, and it always knows that it 
will. Therefore, the truly meek man may be de- 
fined as the man who sees the proportions of 
things ; the man who has set his feet firm on some 
portion of eternal truth, and then is infinitely 
patient with people who are too stupid, or even 
too wicked, to perceive it, for he is sure that the 
truth will in the end prevail; the truth that he 
sees in so far as it is the real truth, but in any 
case, the real truth. 

And he works for the truth that he sees so long 
as he so sees it, but keeps his eyes open for an 
ever-widening vision. His attitude is " Whatever 
is, is best, when I have done my best." He is not 
discouraged even when he has not done his best. 
For then his attitude is " Whatever is, even when 
it is the result of my not having done my best, is 
the best that I can have now, and therefore it is 
to be made the best of. Instead of giving up the 
struggle, or wasting time in repining, let me now 
do the best that I can with what is left." Per- 
haps, too, in a larger sense, in the great working 
out of things, it may even turn out to be the abso- 
lute best. For even our sins can be made a means 



58 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

of strengthening our inner lives. They too can 
shed a light upon our souls, can be made the step- 
ping stones on which we rise to higher things. 

Even when we have done our best, there will be, 
of course, circumstances which we cannot control, 
calamities that we cannot avert. The farmer 
cannot control the weather, but that does not pre- 
vent him from working as hard as he can to con- 
trol such forces of nature as it is possible to bend 
to his purposes. So the truly meek man uses all 
the means at his disposal to avert tragedy, but 
when in spite of everything it comes, he accepts 
it with equanimity, not in the spirit of resignation, 
but of co-operation. For it is not resignation 
that gladdens and uplifts us, it is co-operation. 

We pray, " Thy will be done," but we should 
pray gladly, not sorrowfully, and we should not 
only pray for it, we should work for it. " For 
this is the will of God, even your sanctification." 
But we are to work out our own sanctification, 
the will of God should not be something to which 
we sorrowfully submit, but something for which 
we gladly work. And therefore our business is to 
find out what it is, and work for it. " Hence- 
forth I call you not servants, but friends, for the 
servant knoweth not what his lord doeth," but it 
is the friend's business to read the mind of his 
friend. So the business of life is to read the mind 
of God in such a way as to become the friend of 
God, to find out what the good and perfect will of 
God is, and to do it. 



THE MEEK 69 

And when we find that we have made mis- 
takes, so far from being discouraged, we should 
rejoice that we have acquired the wisdom to per- 
ceive our errors. For if what seemed right to us 
yesterday seems wrong today, it is because we 
have passed on to a higher plane, have come to 
know God better. For what is God, or God's will, 
to any one of us, save our own highest ideal of 
righteousness? And we are to rise to higher 
things, not only on stepping stones of our dead 
selves, but on stepping stones of our dead ideals. 

Nothing in the character of Goethe is more in- 
spiring, than the joy with which he welcomed the 
experiences, which contributed to unlearning what 
was false, as well as the experiences which con- 
tributed to learning what was true. For nothing 
was so joyous to him as to feel himself grow, and 
he grew by unlearning as well as by learning. 
Therefore it was an object with him, while pre- 
serving his identity, to be constantly putting his 
old self behind him. " The Regeneration," he 
writes from Italy, " which is changing me within 
and without, continues to work. The more I am 
obliged to renounce my former self, the more de- 
lighted I am." 

" The soul that is meekly honest ! " I came 
across that expression the other day. What does 
this mean save the soul that is honestly seeking 
the truth, instead of opposing his own will to it.? 
who is willing to give up even his conception of 
truth for what proves to be the real truth, the 



60 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

soul that does not resent or resist the truth, the 
soul that receives sorrow and disappointment 
meekly, so that it becomes to it sweetness and not 
bitterness, a source of strength rather than a 
source of weakness. 

We attain this poise, this self-possession, this 
equanimity, this meekness, as we have perfect con- 
fidence that if we honestly strive to do our part, 
what ever has been, is, and will be, is right. No 
mistake, no calamity is then irreparable; we can 
always convert it into something that is not a 
mistake, something that is not calamity. For the 
Father hath put all things into our hands, all 
things that we ought to have, and we come from 
God, and go to God. 

So much for the attitude of the meek toward 
external people, toward external things. "What 
about their attitude toward themselves? Well, 
they do not think of themselves more highly than 
they ought to think, but, on the other hand, they 
do not think of themselves more lowly than they 
ought to think. Indeed, their charm consists in 
the fact that they do not seem to think of them- 
selves at all. They have neither the self-appre- 
ciation, nor the self-depreciation, both of which 
spring from thinking too much about ourselves, 
and both of which prevent people from entering 
into easy relations with their fellows. Being 
neither shy nor self-assertive, they are at ease in 
any company. They can take either a high place 
or a low place without self-consciousness, think- 



THE MEEK 61 

ing none the better of themselves because it is 
high, and none the less of themselves because it is 
low. The important thing is not that it should 
be a high place or a low place, but that it should 
be their place, the place which they can fill. They 
know that to belittle themselves is just as snobbish 
as to exalt themselves, that it is just as bad to be 
conscious that the place that they can fill is a 
small one, as it is to be conscious that it is a 
great one. 

For whatever talents we may possess are gifts, 
and there is no occasion to be exalted if they have 
been bestowed, or to be humiliated if they have 
been withheld. And when we cannot do great 
things ourselves, we should be just as glad to see 
others do them, for in the life of the world, the 
important thing is not that we should do great 
things, but that great tilings should be done. 
And in our own lives the important thing is that 
we should be and do what we can, be that little 
or great. We are to run with patience the race 
that is set before us, but that race is not one in 
which the object is to get ahead of others, but one 
in which the object is to reach the goal, a goal 
which we can all reach, for, for each of us the 
goal is simply his best. And my attaining my 
best self does not interfere with your attaining 
your best self. 

However, this does not mean that each of us 
is to be content with the place in which he may 
at any particular time find himself, if that place 



62 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

does not happen to be the one in which he can be 
his best. We are not to choose the principal 
place at the feast, but there is a difference be- 
tween wanting the principal place at the feast, a 
mere honor, and wanting an opportunity for 
fuller development and wider service, more and 
better work. It used to be said that Abraham 
Lincoln never sought an office, but I am glad that 
the facts correct that popular superstition. 
When the elder Pitt said to the Duke of Devon- 
shire, " My lord, I know that I can save this 
country, and that no one else can," if he hon- 
estly believed what he said, he was not only justi- 
fied in seeking office, but he would have been crim- 
inal if he had not sought it. For it is right to 
strive even for a high place, if one honestly wants 
it, not for the prestige that it brings, but for 
the work, the service that it makes possible. 

Yes, there are those for whom it is right at 
times to seek high office, but it must be sought in 
the spirit of him who said, " Brethren, I count 
not myself to have apprehended, but I follow 
after, if by any means I may apprehend that for 
which I have been apprehended of Christ Jesus." 
Or in the spirit of Him who cried, " O Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and 
stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
would I have gathered thy children, as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
would not." If that be egotism or self-seeking, 
make the most of it. 



THE MEEK 
WAITING 

Serene, I fold my hands and wait 
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate. 
For lo ! my own shall come to me. 

I stay my haste, I make delays. 
For what avails this eager pace? 

I stand amid the eternal ways. 

And what is mine shall know my face. 

Asleep, awake, by night or day, 

The friends I seek are seeking me ; 

No wind can drive my bark away. 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 

What matter if I stand alone? 

I wait with j oy the coming years ; 
My heart shall reap where it hath sown. 

And garner up its fruit of tears. 

The waters know their own and draw 

The brook that springs in yonder height; 

So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delight. 

The stars come nightly to the sky. 

The tidal wave into the sea; 
Nor time nor space, nor deep, nor high 

Can keep my own away from me. 

John Burroughs. 



THEY THAT HUNGER AND THIRST 
AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 

" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, for they shall be filled." With 
what will they be filled? Why, with righteous- 
ness, the thing after which they hunger and 
thirst! Goodness itself is the assured and only 
reward of goodness. Heaven and Hell, consid- 
ered as reward and punishment, are immoral in- 
ventions. 

Why is it that we ever do wrong? In the last 

analysis, is it not because we really do not wish 

to do right? Yet we often hear people say very 

earnestly, " I do want to do right, but it just 

seems as though I couldn't." " They tell us that 

we can always do right if we try hard enough," 

Mr. Barrie writes. " So I suppose that Tommy 

didn't try hard enough, but only God knows how 

hard he did try.'^ And as we look into our own 

hearts, we must admit that there is such a thing 

as doing wrong when in a sense we would like to 

do right, but that is because while, up to a certain 

point, we do want to do right, we want to do 

wrong more. For, in the last analysis, we always 
64 



THEY THAT HUNGER 65 

do the thing that we want most to do. So that 
if we really want to do right more than we want 
to do anything else, we will do it. 

That is, if we truly hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, as the starving man hungers after 
bread, and as the thirsty man thirsts after water, 
we will surely have it. But we must remember 
that, compared with his desire for food, the hun- 
gry man desires nothing else; compared with his 
desire for drink, the thirsty man has no other de- 
sire. And the spiritual hunger and thirst must 
be just as intense as the physical hunger and 
thirst. Then, and then only, is it certain of 
gratification. " If with all your hearts ye seek 
Me, ye shall surely find Me." 

For while alas ! it is possible to hunger after 
food and drink, and not be filled, it is not possible 
to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and not 
be filled. And just as food and drink keep the 
body alive, so righteousness keeps the soul alive. 
For the soul is that part of us which aspires after, 
and unites us with the Infinite and Eternal, and 
only through righteousness is that aspiration 
kept alive, that union maintained. Thus right- 
eousness is the food of the soul, without which the 
soul cannot live. 

And yet there is a difficulty. I remember poor 
George III., who did seem to want to do right, 
and to make others do right, (the latter of course 
was his weakness), and yet managed to do more 
harm than his two predecessors put together, 



66 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

neither of whom cared about doing right. Must 
we conclude, then, that while he who hungers and 
thirsts after righteousness, will surely be filled 
with it, in so far as he understands what it is, 
there can yet be no assurance that his under- 
standing will be guided aright? 

The truth seems to be that it is quite as much 
our duty to find out what righteousness is, as it is 
to do it after we have found out. That is, the 
honest eff*ort to find out what righteousness is, is 
a part of righteousness, perhaps the most impor- 
tant part, certainly the most difficult part. It is 
quite as much our duty to serve the Lord our 
God with all our minds, as it is to serve Him with 
all our strength. Serving Him with all the mind 
means self-development ; serving Him with all the 
strength means self-control. On the whole the 
former is more important than the latter, for 
while self-control is only a means, self-develop- 
ment is an end, the end for which we were created. 
God created us that we should fulfil ourselves, not 
that we should restrain ourselves. As the sin 
against the Spirit is to doubt the Spirit, so the 
sin against life is to deny life. Restraint can 
only be tolerated as a temporary, partial means 
toward fulfillment. But when perfect fulfillment 
is reached, that which is perfect is come, " law, 
life, joy, impulse are one thing." 

We sometimes wish that there were a Voice 
from Heaven to tell us just what the right thing 
was. We would be wilhng to do it if only we 



THEY THAT HUNGER 67 

knew what it was ! But if such a Voice could 
come, we would be deprived of the opportunity to 
serve the Lord our God with all our minds, that 
is, of our chance of self -development, our chance 
of becoming ourselves, which is only another way 
of saying our chance of becoming one with the 
Father. The child does not become one with his 
father through obeying commands that he does 
not understand, but by understanding his father's 
nature, and his father's wishes so well, that com- 
mands are unnecessary. So it is only as we are 
able to find out the will of God without being told, 
that we can really become one with Him, think His 
thoughts, understand His nature, hear His voice, 
not as something outside of us, but as something 
within us. " This is life eternal, to know Thee, 
the only true God." But we can never know Him 
through just being told about Him, He must 
speak within us. 

" Blessed art thou, Simon bar-Jonah, for flesh 
and blood hath not revealed it unto Thee, but my 
Father which is in Heaven." And the Father 
spoke not to Him, but within Him. When the 
union of two spirits is complete, there is no need 
of speaking to each other. " In that day ye shall 
ask me nothing," and I will tell you nothing. 
There is no need of asking or telling, for I am 
you and you are I, we are made perfect in one. 
In so far as I understand my friend, I am one 
with my friend. In so far as I understand God, 
I am one with God. 



68 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

It is this sense of oneness with the Father that 
distinguishes Jesus from all the prophets that 
came before Him. The Old Testament prophets 
thought of Jehovah as something outside of them- 
selves, guiding and directing them. Jesus, on the 
other hand, thought of the Father as one with 
Himself, " I and the Father are one." He had 
no need of any one to testify to Him of man, for 
He Himself knew what was in man. And so He 
had no need of any one to testify to Him of God, 
for He Himself knew what was in God. God was 
in Him, and He was in God. And His prayer for 
His disciples was that they should be united with, 
identified with the Father, even as He was. " No 
man knoweth the Father, save the Son." That 
is, to know God, we must become sons of God. 
Only by the God within us can we know the God 
above us. 

To the superficial reader, it may be rather 
shocking to find Oscar Wilde writing, " I don't 
care whether I am a better man or not, provided 
only I am a deeper man." But what is it to be 
a deeper man? Is it not to understand man bet- 
ter, and to understand God better.'* And can one 
be a deeper man without being a better man? 
We are told that David was a man after God's 
own heart. What can this mean save that he was 
a deep man, a man who had learned to understand 
man, a man who had learned to understand God? 
And he had learned this largely through his mis- 
takes. 



THEY THAT HUNGER 69 

Oscar Wilde tells us that morality had no in- 
terest for him. After all, there is a sense in 
which it had no interest for Jesus, the morality 
that consists in outward forms. For forms teach 
nothing, it is only inner experiences that teach. 
" It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the letter profit- 
eth nothing." 

The truth is that the Divine government is not, 
as frequently represented, an absolute monarchy, 
or a benevolent despotism; it is a democracy. 
And the superiority of democracy to paternalism 
does not consist in the fact that the laws are bet- 
ter, they frequently are not. Indeed, if we con- 
sider any one generation, it is often possible to 
find that better things are done, better conditions 
created, under paternalism than under democracy. 
The advantage which a successful democracy has 
over a successful despotism is, not that it makes 
better laws, or even better outward actions, but 
that it makes better developed people. For 
through making their laws, that is through for- 
mulating their ideals, the people make themselves. 
So God allows us to make our own laws, that is 
to find out His laws, for ourselves, even at the 
risk of making great mistakes. For the object of 
the Divine government is not to make laws, but 
to make men. And our failures, quite as much as 
our successes, help us to be men. 

When I was a young girl I had to make an 
important decision. After I had made it, I had 
reason to think that my father disapproved of it, 



70 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

but when I questioned him on the subject, he re- 
plied, " Well, it is better that you should decide 
for yourself, than that I should decide for you. 
Even if you are making a mistake, it is better 
that you should make a mistake for yourself, than 
that I should make it for you." Yes, the mis- 
takes which we make for ourselves, especially 
when we have honestly tried to find the right 
course, are developing, while the mistakes which 
others make for us, are too often only embitter- 
ing. But not only are the honest mistakes which 
we make for ourselves more developing than the 
mistakes which others make for us, but they often 
bring us nearer to God, than even the wise deci- 
sions made for us by others. 

For we are here, not even to find righteousness, 
we are here to find ourselves. We find ourselves 
through finding righteousness, but only through 
finding it ourselves, not through having it found 
for us. Indeed, in the last analysis, unrighteous- 
ness would seem to be nothing save unwillingness 
to think, wilful inability to think straight, a re- 
fusal to use our reason, in reliance upon the 
Power that has given us that reason. 

But while democracy is the highest ideal of 
government, it is of course an adventure, and a 
dangerous adventure. Yet, dangerous as it is, it 
is nothing like so dangerous as the adoption of a 
rule-of-thumb morality, adopting it not only for 
one's self, but attempting to force it upon others. 
That is not only the most dangerous, but the most 



THEY THAT HUNGER 71 

sinful thing that it is possible to do. For it is 
both to lose one's own soul, through stifling all 
chance for its development, and to endanger the 
souls of others. " Quench not the Spirit," the 
principle of growth within jou. And the Puri- 
tan is in fully as much danger of quenching the 
Spirit as is the libertine. 

Much has been written about the dangers aris- 
ing from an excessive or perverted emotional na- 
ture. But what about the danger of an excessive 
or perverted will? the will that, as in the case 
of poor George HI., is used to close both the mind 
and the heart, to stifle the voice within us that is 
trj^ing to say, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
heareth." 

The truth is that we are too apt to mistake 
hungering and thirsting after our own way, try- 
ing to impose our own will upon others, for hun- 
gering and thirsting after righteousness. What 
passes for a strong will is often mere obstinacy, 
wilfulness rather than will. And wilfulness diff^ers 
from will, in that there is no mind behind it, it is 
will that is not able to justify itself. 

In one of his books. Professor Sumner of Yale 
carries his well-known delight of putting truth in 
the form of paradox, to the extent of asserting 
that, of all dangerous citizens, quite the most dan- 
gerous is the man of principle. Now there is 
nothing of which we are prouder than of having 
principles, and of sticking to them through thick 
and thin, regardless of consequences. Professor 



72 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

Sumner, however, contended that these so-called 
principles are dangerous, because too often they 
degenerate into iron rules of conduct, that take 
no account of changing conditions, because based 
on the idea that right and wrong are absolute, 
not relative. 

For there is only one righteousness which is 
absolute, and that is of the spirit, and not of the 
letter ; it consists in loving the Lord our God with 
all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, 
and with all our strength, and our neighbor as 
ourselves. Perfect love for God, perfect love for 
the neighbor, perfect, that is enlightened love for 
the self, is the only real righteousness, the only 
righteousness that does not deprive us of the indi- 
viduality and the sympath}^ that we were put here 
to develop. Any righteousness that is developed 
at the expense of initiative and tenderness is sheer 
loss. 

The form of expression that the love that is 
righteousness should take, is left to our God- 
given reason to determine. Certainly it does not 
express itself by blindly following a line of con- 
duct fixed years ago, before the conditions of the 
present age could possibly be known. For not 
only is true love never blind, it never sees with 
other people's eyes. 

No! God does not supply us with rules of 
righteousness. He is a source of righteousness. 
Like the lute-player in the " Bard of the Dimbo- 
Vitza." 



THEY THAT HUNGER 73 

"If thou art thirsty He will ne'er 
Give thee a drink, but show thee where 
His well doth stand." 

Moreover, conventional righteousness cannot be 
the real righteousness, for if it were, it could be 
fully attained, and growth would stop. The soul 
would have no chance to build more lofty cham- 
bers as the old decay. We are to be filled with 
righteousness, but that means that we are to be 
filled now, up to the limits of our present capacity, 
filled and satisfied for now, but not filled or sat- 
isfied for all time. For to be filled permanently, 
to have satisfied one's desire for all time, to have 
attained one's final end, is not Heaven, but Hell. 
In his " Child of the Dawn," Mr. Benson makes 
Hell the land of satisfied desire. And the land of 
permanently satisfied desire, even when that desire 
is for righteousness, is indeed Hell. " Wherefore, 
that that which is should be perfect is not allot- 
ted, for if it is lacking in naught, then it is lack- 
ing in all things." 

Nevertheless, " Ye shall be perfect, even as 
your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." But 
our Father in Heaven is for each of us his own 
highest ideal, and the highest ideal of today is sup- 
planted by the still higher ideal of tomorrow. 
The music that one loves the best is that which 
speaks to the soul of something far off^ and un- 
attainable. And to each poet the song that he 
never wrote is the dearest song. 

But while we are not to accept conventional 



74 ULTIMATE n)EALS 

standards because they are conventional, neither 
are we to reject them on that account. I once 
knew two little girls whose mother had set them 
on a long summer afternoon to do some examples 
in division of fractions. The younger child set to 
work at once, and finished them before the other, 
who was fretting away nervously, had even made 
a beginning. The child whose task was com- 
pleted exclaimed impatiently, " Mildred, why 
don't you hurry up and do your examples, so that 
you can come out and play ? '^ " Because," was 
the reply, " I don't understand them." " Why," 
retorted the other, " it is perfectly simple. Just 
turn the divisors upside down, and multiply nu- 
merators and denominators together." " Oh, I 
know that," answered the first, " and could have 
done it as quickly as you did, but I didn't under- 
stand why that is di\dding, and I won't do one 
thing until I understand why." " Oh," said the 
little sister, " it is dividing because the book says 
so, and because mother says so." " Helen 
Brown," was the indignant and superior reply, 
" if you are going to believe everything just be- 
cause books say so, and mother says so, I pity 
you." 

And, indeed, there was ground for pity. Nev- 
ertheless the little sister might have retorted with 
equal force, " Mildred Brown, if you are going to 
disbelieve everything just because books say so, 
and because mother says so, I pity you." 

For the experience of the ages is not to be de- 



THEY THAT HUNGER 75 

spised; it must count for something, must indeed 
count for a great deal. Every student of history 
or of sociology knows that there is or was a real 
reason behind almost every convention, that to 
obey conventions is often simply to let the great 
social conscience make short-cut decisions for us. 
So we are neither to accept nor to reject con- 
ventions simply because they are conventions, we 
are to prove all things, to hold fast that which is 
good. It is possible that in our search after 
righteousness, we may, as Mr. Chesterton says, 
sail all around the globe only to find England 
again, but the England that we have discovered 
for ourselves is different from the England that 
we have accepted from others. Accepted plati- 
tudes are deadening, realized platitudes are life- 
giving. 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the law 
and the prophets. I am come not to destroy, but 
to fulfil ! " Nevertheless, " except your righteous- 
ness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees," the people who appear to care most 
about the law and the prophets, " ye shall in no 
wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven ! " But 
how is our righteousness to exceed the righteous- 
ness of the scribes and Pharisees ? By its inward- 
ness ! Instead of paying so much attention to the 
outward actions, attend first to the inner thought 
and emotions. " God is a Spirit, and they who 
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth ! " " My son, give me thy heart." 



76 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

It is also to be noticed that the righteousness 
after which we hunger and thirst cannot be nega- 
tive righteousness. For we cannot hunger and 
thirst after a negative good. We do not hunger 
and thirst not to have poison, we hunger and 
thirst to have food and drink. And just as it is 
impossible to hunger and thirst after negative 
righteousness, so it is impossible to be filled with 
it. Negations are not filling. Our religion must 
be an inspiring, not a repressive force. We do 
want to get rid of vice, but only as a means 
toward an end, that is, that the room which it 
occupies may be filled with virtue. For when the 
unclean spirit had gone out of the man, it was 
only that it might take to it seven other spirits 
worse than himself, and return again to the house 
that it found swept, garnished and empty. 

So we must take care not to free ourselves from 
the vices of the body only to make room for the 
much more contemptible vices of the mind: pride, 
contempt, avarice and hypocrisy. For we may 
be sure that any righteousness that does not in- 
crease our love for our fellowmen is not righteous- 
ness, and will land us not in Heaven, but in Hell. 
From its etymology Hell is simply that which 
separates us, to be helled is to be shut off^ from. 
And he who has built a wall around himself so as 
to separate himself from his fellowmen is in hell, 
even though the wall be a wall of righteousness. 
There can be no loving the Lord our God with all 
our heart that does not include the love of the 



THEY THAT HUNGER 77 

neighbor. To love God in such a way as sepa- 
rates us from, makes us despise the neighbor, is 
really not to love, but to hate God. 

And of course to hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness is not to abstain from evil, because one is 
afraid of its consequences. If I abstain from 
being a drunkard, it should not be chiefly because 
I am afraid of the havoc of body and mind which 
drunkenness produces, the loss of social consid- 
eration and so forth, but because I am eagerly 
desirous of some positive development, some active 
service with which drunkenness would interfere. 
We cast sin away, not so much because we see the 
ugliness of sin, as because we see the beauty of 
holiness. Virtue must not be confounded with 
respectability. 

Neither is it possible to take any credit to our- 
selves when we practice the negative virtues for 
the sake of getting on, rather than for the sake of 
rendering efficient service. We cannot serve God 
and mammon; neither can we make our service of 
God a means of serving mammon. 

Moreover, no one who truly hungers and thirsts 
after righteousness can ever be made sour and sad 
by attaining it. Food makes the hungry man 
glad, water rejoices the heart of the thirsty man. 
So there is no one who really hungers and thirsts 
after righteousness, who does not shout for joy 
when he obtains it. The sanction of righteous- 
ness is happiness. For righteousness is the food 
of the soul, not its medicine. Moreover when we 



78 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

really hunger and thirst after righteousness, all 
sense of duty vanishes. He who hungers and 
thirsts after righteousness no more does right 
from a sense of duty, than he who hungers and 
thirsts after food and drink eats and drinks from 
a sense of duty. 

And true righteousness does not deprive us of 
an interest in life, for true righteousness, true 
saintliness, unites us with, rather than separates 
us from, our fellows. 

" Love not the world, neither the things that 
are in the world ! " Yet " God so loved the 
world." And I think that He loved not only the 
people that are in the world, but all the beautiful 
things that are in the world, whether they are 
man-made or God-made. " My country right or 
wrong; if right, to keep it right; if wrong, to 
make it right." So we may also say, " This 
world of God's, right or wrong; if right, to keep 
it right ; if wrong, to set it right." 

What is the conclusion of the whole matter .f' 
It is this : If we really and truly try with all our 
hearts to find out what the good and perfect will 
of God is, we are sure to find out as much as God 
means us to find out for the present. " If with all 
your hearts ye seek Me, ye shall surely find Me." 

If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we 
are sure to be filled with what for us is righteous- 
ness, even though that righteousness be relative, 
and not absolute. For to hve up to our own 
judgment and our own principles, having done all 



THEY THAT HUNGER 79 

that we could to make that judgment and those 
principles high, is subjective, if not objective 
righteousness. And if, when we have really used 
the best judgment that has been given to us, we 
still make mistakes, we must conclude that God 
means us to make mistakes, that He means to use 
even our mistakes to work out some higher pur- 
pose, some higher righteousness. So even in our 
mistakes, we have attained the righteousness that, 
at this stage. He meant us to attain. When 
Browning's Pope, exercising his best judgment, 
condemns Guido, he says 

** If some acuter wit, fresh-probing, sound 
His multifarious mass of words and deeds 
Deeper, and reach through guilt to innocence, 
I shall face Guido's soul, nor blench a jot. 

'* God, who set me to judge thee, meted out 
So much of judging faculty, no more! 
Ask Him if I was slack in use thereof ! " 

For the error that is not our fault we are not 
responsible. God means us sometimes to find our 
way through error to truth. The truth that can 
be seen at once is generally superficial truth, or 
at best, objective truth, not subjective truth. 
For it is something outside, and not inside of us. 
Truth, to be truth for us, must, like the kingdom 
of heaven be within us. *' If with all your hearts 
ye seek Me, ye shall surely find Me," and when that 
which is perfect is come, we shall find that even 
the mistakes were steps on the way to finding Him. 



VI 
THE MERCIFUL 

Who is the merciful person? Is he the person 
who denies sin? If so, man's mercy must be very 
different from God's mercy, for God never denies 
sin. God recognizes, more than man does, the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of sin. No, the merciful man 
is he who, like God, does not deny sin, but who, 
also like God, understands it, understands sin and 
understands the sinner. I sometimes think that 
God can hardly be said to forgive us at all. He 
just understands us. And when we really under- 
stand, there is no room for forgiveness ; love, sym- 
pathy and help take its place. 

That is why we are never ashamed to confess 
our sins to God, for God is not only the spirit 
of love, but also the spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, the spirit of love because He is the 
spirit of wisdom and understanding. We do not 
love because we do not understand, or it may be 
we do not understand because we do not love. 
But God is the Spirit that understands all, not 
only what we do and say, but also the inmost 
thoughts of our hearts, just what the temptation 
to which we have succumbed was to us, all our 

80 



THE MERCIFUL 81 

inherited tendencies, all the temptations that come 
to us from environment. He knows too the lim- 
ited vision that has been granted to each of us, 
knows therefore that of all sinners it might be 
said, as Jesus said of those who did Him to death, 
" They know not what they do." 

He understands too that while it is possible 
that in the best action of the best man, there is a 
seed of evil which, if allowed to develop, would be 
sufficient to damn, it is certain that in the worst 
actions of the worst man, there is a seed of good 
which, if allowed to develop, would be sufficient to 
save. And He has no need to judge after the 
sight of His eyes, or to reprove after the hearing 
of His ears, for He is able to see more than eyes 
can see, to hear more than ears can hear. He 
needeth not that any one should testify to Him 
of man, for He Himself knows what is in Man. 

It is because we feel that men do not under- 
stand us that we cry out for a God who does. 
We are never quite happy in the presence of one 
who loves us, but from whom we are keeping some- 
thing back. We feel that his love depends upon 
our keeping it back. The real friend is the 
friend who understands us fully, and who loves 
us just the same. But is there any such friend? 
Is it not because there is no such friend that we 
are obliged to believe in God? We read that of 
old Moses talked face to face with God as a man 
talketh with his friend. But nowadays I believe 
we are sometimes tempted to cry out, " Would 



82 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

that there were a friend with whom we could talk 
face to face, as a man talketh with his God ! " 

I have just been reading Mr. H. G. Wells' 
" Research Magnificent." In it I find a charac- 
ter, Prothero, who does talk to his friend Benham, 
as intimately as a man talks to God. But in real 
life we rarely lay our hearts bare to our friends. 
There is always something that we keep back. 
We are afraid either that the friend would be 
bored, or that he would not understand, and there- 
fore would be shocked. But whenever we feel 
that we are really thinking ourselves or anything 
else down to the bottom, we have a feeling that we 
are talking to God, the great Spirit of the Uni- 
verse, who includes all, and therefore understands 
and loves all. 

" Sir," said the Samaritan woman, " I perceive 
that thou art a prophet." And when Jesus pro- 
ceeds to show her that He knows all about her sin- 
ful and sorrowful past, she does not seem to be at 
all ashamed, for in the presence of the true 
prophet, we may be sorry, but we are not 
ashamed. " Come see a man who told me all 
things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ.'* " 
What would the Christ, the Messiah, be to each 
of us, save a man who could tell us, and to whom 
we could tell, all things that ever we did, and not 
be ashamed.? 

So I could fancy no praise that would seem 
quite so great to me, as for one to say to me, that 
he would never be ashamed to tell me anything. 



THE MERCIFUL 83 

For it would mean that I was becoming' like God, 
in that I was able to see beneath the surface, 
that I was developing the spiritual eye, the spir- 
itual ear, to serve as interpreter of impressions 
made upon the physical eye, the physical ear. I 
have a friend who, when she is summing up the 
character of another, feels that she has bestowed 
her highest praise, when she says " She is not 
easily shocked." And if the not being easily 
shocked does not imply an absence of ideals, but 
rather a knowledge of, an understanding of human 
nature, an ability to see not only the deed but also 
the soul of the doer, then surely it is a quality de- 
serving of praise. God is never shocked, for He 
understands all. 

I once heard it said of a very sweet young girl, 
" It is easy for her to be so uniformly sweet, for 
she has nothing of the reformer in her nature." 
But that is not the kind of sweetness that we 
want, not the sweetness that is blind to sin, but 
the sweetness that sees sin clearly, and stays sweet 
just the same; the sweetness which understands, 
and knows that if there be condemnation, it should 
not be so much for the individual as for the whole 
order of society, that has made such sin possible. 
It may be permitted to Pippa to sing " All's right 
with the world," but Pippa was only a child. 
Browning, the author of " Fifine," the creator of 
Guido and his brothers, certainly never meant to 
teach that all was right with the world in the 
child's sense. Indeed, as we read his poems, there 



84 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

are times when we are more inclined to say, " All's 
wrong with the world. Who will show us any 
good? " But it is true that deep beneath the 
wrong, Browning did find all right with the world. 
As a friend of mine said of a popular play, " Its 
lesson seems to be that while at present all is 
wrong with the world, there is beneath all that 
is wrong something that is right, and that will in 
the end make everything right." That is life's 
lesson. 

" He that is spiritual judgeth all things," but 
" Judge not according to appearances, but judge 
righteous judgment." The mercy of the man who 
is ignorant of sin, or who wilfully denies its exist- 
ence, is not real mercy. It is only because Brown- 
ing, like his own David, had gone the whole round 
of creation, that his final judgment of human 
nature is worth anything. That judgment is to 
be found in the last lines which came from his pen, 
in which he describes himself as 

** One who never turned his back, but marched breast 
forward. 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong 

would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." 

We are sometimes told that we must not be 
too critical. I am inclined to think that it is 
impossible to be too critical, if only we can be 
critical in the right spirit. The criticism or 



THE MERCIFUL 85 

analysis of others can never hurt the soul that is 
conscious of its own weakness. For it is not criti- 
cism, but complacency that is the enemy of spir- 
itual growth. We must not indulge in it, not so 
much because it hurts others, ^g,s because it hurts 
ourselves. It did not hurt the publican that the 
Pharisee prayed within himself, " Lord, I thank 
thee that I am not as other men are, unjust, adul- 
terers, extortioners, or even as this publican,'* but 
it did hurt the Pharisee. 

There are only two sins that Jesus condemned 
unsparingly, hypocrisy and avarice. And the 
hypocrisy which he condemned did not consist in 
pretending to others that one was better than one 
was. It was the much more hopeless sin of be- 
lieving one's self that one was better than one 
was. And the sinner was almost always a correct 
person, a devotee of formal righteousness. 

Of course the difficulty here, as elsewhere in life, 
is that if we escape ScyUa, we are in danger of 
falling into Charybdis. Just as it is always 
harder for the tolerant person to tolerate intoler- 
ance than to tolerate any other sin, so it is harder 
for the merciful person to extend mercy to this 
unmerciful righteousness, this spiritual security, 
than to any other sin. And are we really called 
upon to do so? I said the other day that I de- 
spised a snob, and was told that it was never right 
to despise any one. And in truth I believe that' 
it is not in my nature permanently to despise any 
one. But in setting up standards, in combating 



86 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

sins that are not generally recognized as sins, 
fierce waves of contempt such as swept over Jesus 
Himself, when He pronounced His woes upon the 
self-satisfied people of His own day, do seem to 
me to be justifiable. There is no need to despise 
the type of person who is guilty of physical sin, 
such sin is clearly recognized as sin. Moreover it 
brings its own penalty. But it is the mission of 
this age, as it was the mission of Jesus' own age, 
to put snobbishness, hard superiority, in its 
proper place. And its proper place is at the 
very head of the category of possible sins. 

Yet in judging the modem Pharisee, we must 
remember that even for his sin, society is more to 
blame than is the individual. For the erring in- 
dividual has probably been brought up to be a 
self-righteous snob. Society which, through its 
bad tenement houses, exposes the poor and the 
low-bom to physical temptations, through its 
false standards exposes the well-to-do and the 
well-born to this more subtle temptation. Thus, 
in the last analysis, even here it is society rather 
than the individual who is to be condemned, the 
sin rather than the sinner. 

So I think that we can be sure that while, when 
we really understand, there will still be some sins 
that we will continue to condemn unsparingly, 
there will be no sinner whom we shall so condemn. 
But there can be no real understanding that is of 
the head alone, the heart must play its part. 
" The prophets," says Matthew Arnold, " ear- 



THE MERCIFUL 87 

nestly reminded their nation of the superiority of 
justice and judgment to any exterior ceremony 
like sacrifice. But judgment and justice them- 
selves, as Israel in general conceived them, have 
something exterior in them ; now what was wanted 
was more inwardness, more feeling. This was 
given by adding mercy and humbleness to judg- 
ment and justice. Mercy and humbleness are al- 
ways something inward, they are affections of the 
heart." In one sense mercy is only justice — 
that is, it is head justice and heart justice, not 
just external justice. 

Head justice and heart justice, that is what we 
want, the seeing eye, the understanding heart, 
justice that understands, justice that loves, for 
that is the only justice that is justice! In judg- 
ing our fellowmen we must not leave our intellects 
behind us. Justice that is merely of the heart is 
not justice, but wishy-washy sentimentality. But, 
on the other hand, justice that is of the head alone 
is never real justice, for the head alone never 
understood a single human being, or a single im- 
portant human interest. We must use both head 
and heart to evolve our ideals of right and wrong, 
we must use both head and heart to understand 
our fellowmen who may sin against these ideals. 

Understanding, of course, does not always mean 
approving, nor does it necessarily mean that even 
when people do approve of each other, that they 
can always work together. An acquaintance of 
mine tpld me that when he was traveling in China 



88 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

he heard of two missionaries who would have noth- 
ing to do with each other. His informant seemed 
to think that this proved conclusively that neither 
was a real Christian. His own impression was 
that the two men did not understand each other; 
if only they could be brought to do this, he felt 
that there should be no difficulty about their 
working together. But when he came to know 
them, he discovered that there was no lack of un- 
derstanding, and even of respect, and yet each was 
convinced that the other's mode of work was 
wrong, that the other, although a good man, was 
mistaken. Hence of course there could be no 
working together. Probably it was even better 
that they should not meet often, but there was no 
lack of mercy. 

And then of course sometimes we may recognize 
the fact that a man's way of working and living 
is right for him, but it is not our way. Hence 
although we may approve of him, we cannot work 
or live together. But the important thing is that 
a man should cast out devils, not that he should 
follow with us. 

Yes, when we really understand our fellowmen, 
it is impossible for us not to be merciful. But 
how shall we attain unto this understanding? We 
attain unto it in great measure, at least, by under- 
standing ourselves. Know thyself, not only be- 
cause in order to develop the best self and to 
subdue the worst self, it is necessary to know 
the self, but also because it is through know- 



THE MERCIFUL 89 

ing ourselves that we come to know others. 

For every man is included in every other man. 
Hence the way to understand another is to put 
ourselves in his place, to look into our own hearts, 
and to find in them the seed of evil which, under 
different circumstances, might have developed into 
the same outward action which we are condemn- 
ing in another. Yes, and to look back over our 
own lives, and to see, alas ! that there have been 
times in which seeds of evil not only might, but did 
develop into actions quite as bad as those which 
we are now condemning. And thus seeing clearly 
the beam in our own eye, we will be able to esti- 
mate more fairly the mote that is in our brother's 
eye. And as we know that even with the beam in 
our own eye, we have never been all bad, so we 
can be sure that, in spite of the mote that is in his 
eye, our brother, too, has his good qualities. 

" Know thine own soul," not so much for the 
sake of knowing thine own soul, not as an end in 
itself, but for the sake of realizing the sameness, 
the unity, the brotherhood of all men. That is 
the reason that to the Greek the words " Know 
thyself " comprehended all virtue. For the pur- 
pose of life is that we may see, that the mind may 
see, that the heart may see, that both heart and 
mind may be open to receive light and love. So 
we must keep the mind and the heart open that we 
may understand ourselves, that we may under- 
stand other people. 

What is the great mission of literature save to 



90 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

combat prejudice? to broaden and deepen the 
heart by making it see what lies beneath the sur- 
face? But no poet, no novelist ever wrote any- 
thing worth writing, save as he wrote out of his 
own heart ; hence the necessity of knowing one's 
own heart. And I think that there is a sense in 
which the really great novelist loves all his char- 
acters, and makes us love them all, because he 
understands them all, and makes us understand 
them all. To understand is to love, to love is to 
understand. Men speak of " the gentle Shake- 
speare." But why was he the gentle Shake- 
speare? Because he understood all varieties of 
the human heart and mind, as no other of the sons 
of men has understood them, and loved because he 
understood. This is true greatness. " Thy gen- 
tleness hath made thee great," but also " Thy 
greatness hath made thee gentle." 

It follows as a matter of course that the merci- 
ful are blessed or happy, for the mere being merci- 
ful makes them happy. " The merciful man doeth 
good unto his own soul." Nothing makes us so 
unhappy as harsh and bitter judgments of oth- 
ers. The bitter person must always be the un- 
happy person. But the truly merciful man is 
not only he who has no harshness or bitterness, 
but he who, through a clear understanding, has 
come to see that there is no room for, no excuse 
for harshness or bitterness, for he has come to 
realize not only that there is always good beneath 
the evil, but also that even the evil itself is good 



THE MERCIFUL 91 

in the making. So even evil only serves to kindle 
the flame of his love. He cannot help being an 
optimist, not an unreasoning, but a reasoning op- 
timist, and the reasoning optimist must always be 
happy. 

And then, as I have said so many times in the 
course of this book, the only thing that can bring 
real, lasting happiness, is the feeling that we are 
moving onward in the direction of full develop- 
ment. What is God's mercy to us, save the inner 
peace that comes to us as we grow into more per- 
fect harmony with man and God.^^ And what is 
human perfection save perfect relations with man 
and God ? And we are only merciful in the deep 
sense of the word as we come into closer, more 
perfect relations with both man and God, through 
coming into a fuller understanding of man who 
sins, and of God who forgives sin, and so forgive 
as God forgives. We pray " Forgive us our tres- 
passes as we forgive those who trespass against 
us." Should we not also pray, " Help us to for- 
give those who trespass, whether against us or 
against any one else, even those who trespass 
against themselves, as Thou forgivest us, because 
we understand them as Thou understandest 
us and them " ? 

We sometimes say, " I can't care for so and so, 
because I see through him too well." The real 
truth is that we do not care for him, because we do 
not see through him enough. A little insight, like 
a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing. But 



92 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

when we see through people as God sees through 
them, we will love everybody, even as God loves 
everybody. The true sage is he who, seeing deep- 
est, loves most. 

The reward of the merciful is the opening of 
the eyes, the happiness of seeing that, as the dying 
Luria says, all men do tend to become good crea- 
tures, even though it be so slow. As our hearts 
enlarge to their proper size, we come to see that as 
in Christ Jesus, there can be neither Jew nor 
Greek, bond nor free, so in us there can be no 
such thing. 

And we are to carry mercy so far as to love our 
enemies. To be able to do that is the greatest 
reward, the highest happiness of all. For if love 
is the greatest bliss that the human heart can at- 
tain unto, surely the greatest bliss of all, the joy 
that transcends joy, is to carry love so far as to 
extend it to an enemy. " If ye love them that 
love you, what thank have ye.^^ " No, the great 
reward is when we love those that do not love us, 
and this reward is love itself. 

Is it not significant that hard upon the com- 
mand to love our enemies, come the words " Be ye 
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in 
Heaven is perfect " ? But what is it to be made 
perfect? To be made through and through. 
And we are made through and through only as we 
are filled through and through with love. We 
can only be made perfect, as we are made perfect 
in one, — that is, as we become one with God, and 



THE MERCIFUL 93 

one with our fellowmen. " Love is the fulfillment 
of the law," and when love extends even to the 
enemy, then and then only is the law perfectly ful- 
filled. 

And it makes no difference whether we read this 
verse as a command, or, as in the Revised Version, 
as a promise. 



VII 

THE PEACEMAKERS 

" Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be 
called the children of God." 

Who are the peacemakers? Are they just the 
people who patch up quarrels? If so, not many 
of us have the opportunity to earn this blessing, 
for there are few of us to whose lot it ever falls 
to perform this service. Moreover, when all is 
said and done, peace is not the absence of quarrel- 
ing; comparatively few of us quarrel, and yet 
comparatively few of us have real peace. In the 
last analysis, peace consists not so much in our 
relations to each other, as in our relations to our- 
selves and to God. That is, to the general order 
of the universe, which is God's expression of Him- 
self. Peace, like the kingdom of Heaven, is within 
us ! And peacemakers are not so much those who 
patch up quarrels, as those who diffuse an atmos- 
phere of peace, those who like Jesus say, or rather 
have no need to say, whenever they come into a 
company, " Peace be unto you," and when they 
leave, " My peace I leave with you." 

What is this peace? Ruskin, at the beginning 
of his " Praeterita," says, " For best and truest of 
all blessings, I had been taught the perfect mean- 

94 



THE PEACEMAKERS 95 

ing of Peace in thought and word. I never had 
heard my father's or my mother's voice once 
raised in any question with each other; nor seen 
an angry or even a slightly hurt or offended 
glance, in the eye of either. I had never heard 
a servant scolded; nor even suddenly, passion- 
ately, or in any severe manner blamed. I had 
never seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any 
household matter, nor anything whatever done in 
a hurry, or undone in due time. I had no con- 
ception of such a thing as anxiety. ... I had 
never done any wrong that I knew of, beyond oc- 
casionally delaying the commitment to heart of 
some improving sentence, that I might watch a 
wasp on the window pane, or a bird in the 
cherry tree; and I had never seen any grief." 

Is this peace? Is it not rather the negation 
of life.'' And negation, resignation, is not peace. 
He who said, " Peace I leave with you, my peace I 
give unto you " was also He who said " I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly." No, it is not less life, 
but more life that we want. Peace is not nega- 
tive. Real peace can nowhere be found save in 
life, and life means love and suffering. And while 
it is sometimes important that we should relax 
emotionally, it is far more important that we shall 
have strong emotional natures to relax. 

Ruskin tells us that the general tenor of his 
education was too formal. Was not this peace 
of his childhood also too formal? He not only 



96 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

had no grief, he tells us that at this time he had 
nothing to love. But how can there be peace 
without grief and without love ? No ! if we are 
to have peace we must have the full peace, that 
comes to those who see life steadily, and see it 
whole, not the empty peace that comes to those 
who have no sorrows of their own, and whose eyes 
are blinded to the world's sorrows. If we are to 
have freedom from anxiety, it must not be the 
freedom that those have who have never had any- 
thing to be anxious about, or that they have 
who are too stupid to be anxious, but the peace 
that comes to those who have their share of nat- 
ural anxieties, and are sufficiently clear-sighted to 
see through them, to feel the peace that is under- 
neath them. 

For real peace comes only to one who, like 
Jesus, has been a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief. Peace in the midst of agony, the calm 
wisdom gained by suffering of the Greeks, the 
crown of thorns transformed into a crown of 
glory of the Christian, this only is true peace. 
He only knows peace, who has come out of great 
tribulation, and has made his will one with the 
Divine will. Peace can only be obtained as the 
creature becomes one with the Creator. 

" The rishis," says Tagore, " were they who 
having reached the supreme God from all sides had 
found abiding peace, had become united with all, 
had entered into the Hfe of the universe." In 



THE PEACEMAKERS 97 

such union with the Creator man becomes perfect, 
made perfect through joy, made perfect through 
suffering. He who has attained this peace is 
more even than a child of God, he is one with God. 
" I and the Father are one, we will be one with 
you, ye shall be one with us." The purpose of 
creation is completed, for what is that purpose 
save that the creature shall become one with the 
Creator, thinking His thoughts, understanding 
His laws, doing His will.'' For such a man suffer- 
ing has ended, he has passed " under the ultimate 
angels' law " where 

" Law, Life, Joy, Impulse are one thing." 

But this is a never-ending process, and the 
strongest argument for Eternity is that it is so 
short a time to understand the Eternal, to become 
one with God. 

Those of us who have ever suffered from, or 
been with one who has suffered from melancholia, 
and recovered, know what this means. It some- 
times seems as though nothing could shake them 
again. For they have been to the bottom of all 
things, into the very depths of hell, and there 
they have found God, and found themselves. " If 
I descend into hell, lo, thou art there," and so 
there is no hell. Hell has become simply the way 
to heaven, the fiery path by which we ascend into 
the presence of God. Henceforth although the 
waves may be mountain high, we know that at the 



98 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

bottom there will always be peace. There is no 
longer any fear of the future, for the soul knows 
its own strength. 

" The Future I may face, now I have proved the 
Past." 

Is not this the message of the book of Job, 
the book which Carlyle has so well called " Every 
Man's Book "? Great suffering comes to a right- 
eous man, and through that suffering his right- 
eousness, nay more, he himself ceases to be for- 
mal and becomes real, for through it he obtains 
a vision of God, the great Reality. His three 
friends come to him with the sorry comfort that 
his sufferings are the punishment of his sins, re- 
pentance is what he needs. Elihu comes nearer 
the truth when he asserts that suffering is disci- 
pline, the TraOrjixara of life are fiaOijixaTa. But the 
real solution comes when God Himself answers 
Job out of the whirlwind, giving no intellectual 
solution of the problem of suffering, but creating 
in him such a full sense of His presence, that no 
further solution is necessary. That is what suf- 
fering is for, to bring us into the presence of God. 
Then the heart and mind of man are satisfied. 
" I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, 
but now mine eye seeth Thee." 

What is it to see God.'' Is it not to see, realize 
and be satisfied with the fact that we are at the 
same time everything and nothing? In ourselves 
nothing, as a part of God everything! And to 



THE PEACEMAKERS 99 

this vision of God we only come through suffer- 
ing nobly borne. This is affliction's meaning, this 
is its compensation! 

But the Vision which is Peace does not come to 
us through renunciation. Indeed, so long as re- 
nunciation is conscious, we should be ashamed of 
it, not proud of it. " In the last analysis," said 
the most unselfish person that I know, " I always 
do the things that I like best to do." " Lo, I 
come to do Thy will, O God," because Thy will is 
my will. " I do always the things that please 
Him " because the things that please Him are the 
things that please Me. " To obey is better than 
sacrifice," but not much better, because after all 
obedience has in it something of the nature of 
sacrifice. Glad co-operation is better than either, 
" Henceforth I call you not servants, but 
friends." 

For being one with the Father means not just 
simply submitting to the will of the Father, but 
actively doing it up to the best light that we have. 
We must not be resigned to the will of God, we 
must actively work for it, we must do our best to 
bring it about. For we do not want the peace that 
is a mere mental and moral chloroform, stifling 
ambition, deadening hope. To abandon interest 
in life is not peace. Human nature demands inter- 
est more than it demands anything else, and with- 
out the thing that we demand most, there can be 
no peace. The negation of ambition is not peace. 

" I have learned in whatsoever state I am there- 



100 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

with to be content," but content with it as a 
stage, discontented with it as a finality. For 
peace can be found only in growth; it lies not in 
resignation, but in hope. It comes only to those 
who have a definite plan for their lives, a definite 
object for which they are working up to the Hmit 
of their ability. It lies not in quiescence, but in 
struggle; we find rest only in effort. Baffled in 
trying to attain one object, we must go on to an- 
other ; when one door is closed to us, we must find 
another that is open. We " fall to rise, are 
baffled to fight better, sleep to wake." 

Of course there must be a certain kind not of 
resignation, but of acceptance. We must accept 
our own limitations, accept ourselves as we are. 
We must not say, " If I were different, I could do 
differently," but we must find out what we are, 
accept ourselves for what we are. We must ac- 
cept even the limitations that we have imposed 
upon ourselves, the limitations of mind and body 
caused by our mistakes and sins. Instead of 
wasting our strength in remorse, trying to repair 
the irreparable, we must accept what is left, do 
the best that we can with what we still have. Nor 
must we accept ourselves as less than we are, we 
must respect ourselves, for in the absence of self- 
respect there can be no peace. Moreover, he who 
despises himself soon becomes despicable. 

And we must sometimes accept the hardest 
thing of all to accept, the misunderstanding of 
friends. Thus only can we enter into the fellow- 



THE PEACEMAKERS 101 

ship of His sufferings. For it was not the ac- 
cursed death of the cross that made Him the Man 
of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. It was 
the fact that not even His brethren believed on 
Him, that " He came unto His own, and they that 
were His own, received Him not." 

And we must, of course, accept sorrow and suf- 
fering, sorrow and suffering that seem to us un- 
necessary, not only for ourselves, but for the 
world. Yet most of this, I think, we are to ac- 
cept only as a stage, only until we can find out 
how to avoid it. For instance, it is the conven- 
tional thing to say that it is God's will when a 
friend or comrade is stricken by death, and thence 
to draw comfort. But I cannot be brought to 
the place where I can believe that it is God's will, 
that a man or a woman should be cut off in the 
height of power and service. My comfort is that 
it is not God's will, and that the time is coming 
when men shall so discover and live by God's laws 
that an early death cannot occur, and then, and 
not now, God's will will be done. 

If we ask why we were not told the laws of God 
from the beginning, why so many centuries of 
waste must be lived through in the process of find- 
ing them out, the answer is that in that case there 
would be no opportunity to serve God with all the 
mind; that is, that all opportunity of intellectual 
and spiritual growth would be denied us. For 
while obedience may be moral, it is certainly not 
spiritual. There is no spiritual growth even in 



10^ ULTIMATE IDEALS 

the acceptance of the experience of others ; it is 
only as we find out things for ourselves that the 
spirit grows. Therefore, it is that the work of 
man's life is quite as much to discover the laws of 
God, as it is to obey them. God establishes His 
laws, inviolable and beneficial, gives to man the 
power to discover them, and then leaves him free 
even to ignorance and sin and suffering. 

" Henceforth I call you not servants, but 
friends." To serve God with the mind is to be- 
come the friend of God, for what is the friend 
save the one who understands us, who enters into 
our plans and our purposes ? " Ye are they who 
have continued with me in my temptations." 
That is much, but they who are with us in our 
plans and ambitions, are even more. Men's dear- 
est friends are commonly their fellow-workers, it 
is permitted to us to be workers together with 
God. For God cannot fulfil Himself, cannot 
carry out His own laws, except as we understand 
Him. If the greatest suffering of man is to be 
misunderstood, so to Him also! Speaking after 
the manner of men, let us learn His laws, that we 
may put an end to His suffering ! " The whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth together in 
pain " until the creature understands the Creator. 
Till then, both creature and Creator must suffer. 
For we are not only here to fill out that which is 
lacking in the sufferings of Christ, we are here to 
fill out that which is lacking in the wisdom of God. 

If only we could be sure of the Future ! Then 



THE PEACEMAKERS 103 

it seems as though we could bear anything. But 
we must be content, not resigned, not to know all 
about the Future now, though always working to 
find out more. For if we knew all about the life 
that is to be, the life that now is might be only 
one of waiting. How much time is wasted in wait- 
ing for trains, for meals, for mails ! So we might 
waste the whole life in waiting. And the attitude 
of waiting is not an attitude of growth. 

For we were made to live mainly in the Present, 
— not too much in either the past or the future. 
To live in the past is to stand still or to go back- 
ward, to live in the future in the sense of merely 
waiting for the future, is to cut off the possibility 
of having a future. It is legitimate to live in the 
past only as its joys and its sorrows, its victories 
and its defeats, shed light upon the present. The 
life of yesterday is useful only as it contributes 
strength, sweetness and light to the life of to-day. 
And it is legitimate to live in the future only as 
we are making the future out of the present, not 
as we are worrying about it, or waiting for it. 
And just as we make the future of this life out of 
the present, so it is probable that we make the 
life that is beyond out of the life that now is. 

" The higher life we cannot miss, 
By truly, nobly living this." 

I have a dear friend who, in the ninety years 
that have been allotted her, has done much to 
make this world a better place in which to live. 



104 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

An old gentleman, a contemporary whose life has 
been spent in fighting the same battles that she 
has fought, once said to her, " And now my friend 
and I feel that our work is done, and we have 
nothing to do but wait for the angels to call us 
home." To which the old lady replied in a spir- 
ited way, " You may wait for the angels if you 
want to, I shall be ready for them when they come, 
but I have too much to do to wait for them." 
And for myself, I can only hope that old age will 
find me so full of interest in life that I shall have 
no time to wait for the angels. For then as the 
outward man decays, the inward man will be re- 
newed day by day. Moreover when the inward 
man is constantly being renewed, it generally takes 
the outward man a long time to decay. 

Yes, it is in work that we find life and peace. 
That is the reason that no honest work is ever a 
failure. " I have no more made my Book," says 
Montaigne, " than my Book has made me." That 
is the chief use of work, not what we accomplish 
outside of us, but what we accomplish inside of us. 
The world could get on very well without my work, 
but I could not get on well without it. 

True, " they also serve who only stand and 
wait." But only when such standing and waiting 
is imperative. And when we are actually phys- 
ically or mentally incapacitated for work, I do not 
think that the suffering is great. It is only the 
unnecessary rest that produces restlessness. It is 
when one feels in one's self the capacity to work, 



THE PEACEMAKERS 105 

and yet for some reason, generally some misunder- 
standing, or some social convention, is cut off from 
exercising it, that the suffering is greatest of all. 

Think of the maiden aunts of the past genera- 
tion who sat by the fireside of a sister or a brother ! 
In many cases no one wanted them to be there, 
and they did not want to be there, but there was 
no other place for them to be. Some of these 
women had been in their youth quite as attractive 
as their married sisters, quite as able as their suc- 
cessful brothers, but the chances of life had de- 
nied them the lot of their sisters, social conven- 
tions had denied them the career of their brothers. 
So with no outlet for either emotional nature or 
ability, they became a burden to themselves and to 
everybody else. 

This is the greatest suffering that I can con- 
ceive of. Compared with such women, St. Paul 
did not know the alphabet of suffering! Well 
might he speak of his afflictions as light and but 
for a moment ! For if he was " in prisons more 
abundantly, and in stripes above measure," he 
was also in labors more abundantly, in labors 
above measure! He was working up to the very 
highest point of his ability, for a cause that he 
was sure was worth while! And he had the 
glorious fellowship of the Apostles! Therefore, 
of course, the perils of divers, the perils of rob- 
bers, the perils from his countrymen, the perils 
from the Gentiles, were to him as nothing. But 
the old maid's tragedy, now happily becoming 



106 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

a thing of the past, was lack of work, lack of 
fellowship. Generations of old maids had to groan 
and travail together in pain, waiting to come into 
the heritage of this generation. God grant that 
these sad generations, who in this world had only 
evil things are now comforted. Yes, there is a 
sense in which in the next world they should be put 
even above the best of mothers, for the mothers 
had some of their good things in this life. 

For in such cases the great comfort that comes 
to me is in the thought of the justice of God. 
If God is the Creator, He owes us happiness. 
False theologies have sometimes told us that He 
owes us nothing, but the Father owes His child 
everything. And God is far more responsible for 
us than the earthly parent is for his child. For 
the earthly parent is not always responsible for his 
child's limitations, but in the last analysis the Cre- 
ator is always responsible for our limitations. To 
say that God is not bound by His own laws, that 
what is justice for man is not justice for God, is 
to me too much like the Greek and Roman ideal 
which permitted murder and adultery to their 
gods. Worse, for these sins are in a sense pri- 
vate crimes, affecting, except by example, only a 
few individuals. Injustice on the part of a king is 
worse than private vice. A good man but a bad 
king does more harm than a bad man but a 
good king. God must be at least as high as the 
highest ideals that He has implanted in the best 



THE PEACEMAKERS 107 

men. In no civilized country should a king be 
solutus a legihiis. 

The twin sister of work is prayer. Work and 
prayer are the two angels that comfort us and 
bring us peace. Why do we pray.'^ Our Father 
knoweth the things we have need of before we ask 
Him. We pray then not so much that we may 
obtain the things for which we pray, as that we 
may be renewed and strengthened in the inner man, 
that fellowship with the Infinite may protect us 
from the agitation and embitterment brought on 
by contact with the finite. 

When Jesus prayed I do not believe that He 
was asking for things at all. He was just resting 
Himself upon His Father's love, feeling that His 
Father was there. That is what prayer is, feeling 
our Father's presence, for with His presence comes 
His peace, the peace of God that passeth all un- 
derstanding. We are taught to ask for things in 
early youth, because we are so childish that we 
cannot approach the Infinite in any other way, but 
as our spirits develop, a fuller, better communion 
becomes possible. Then we cease to ask for any- 
thing except spiritual blessings. Prayer consists 
in so uniting ourselves with the source of all 
strength that we become one with the Infinite. 

But not only does this kind of prayer 
strengthen and steady the inner man, it renews the 
ideal. For prayer expressed in words is something 
like saying our lessons. The child says his les- 



108 ULTIMATE IDEALS 

sons, not for the teacher's benefit, but that he may 
clarify his own mind. We do not fully know or 
understand a thing until we can put it into words. 
So through prayer we come to know and under- 
stand our own ideals, clarify and strengthen our 
own notion of the purpose of our lives, and our de- 
sire to fulfil it. 



VIII 
THE PURE IN HEART 

" BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY 
SHALL SEE GOD ! " 

Herein is the sum of the whole matter. 
" Blessed are the 'pure in heart, for they shall see 
God! '* Of course the pure in heart shall see God, 
for who are the pure in heart? The pure in heart 
are they who do see God, in all the works, and all 
the laws of Creation, they who see the Creator in 
everything thut He has created, they who never 
coll anything that God has cleansed common or un- 
clean, they who never make anything that God has 
cleansed common or unclean. 

It is this ability to he pure in heart, this ability 
to see God, that separates man from the lower ani- 
mals. The horse and the dog see the creation — 
only man sees the Creator. Man, and man only, 
has the power to recognize the fact that his body 
is a temple of the living God, and that his spirit is 
a breath of the living God. The Spirit beareth 
witness with our spirit that we are the children of 
God! Only man is capable of enthusiasm, for 
only man has been breathed into by the living 

God! 

109 



110 ULTIIMATE IDEALS 

What is the living God? Here I cannot get be- 
yond the definition that I learned in my childhood. 
God is Love, God is Light, God is Spirit, He is the 
Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit 
of Counsel and Might, the Spirit of Knowledge, 
and the Fear of the Lord! And this Spirit the 
pure in heart always see, for in It they live and 
move and have their Being! 



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